Morning journal and courier., 1884-09-17
THE PARAMOUNT ISSUE.

MT. Michael J. Condon, an ex-Copfederate, and for many years prominent Democrat of Knoxville, Tennessee, where he has held important municipal offices, gives his req sons for joining the Republican party in the present conflict. He recognizes that the tariff is the paramount issue of the hour
 The old free-trade policy, he says, had for its foundation the production by slave labor of raw cotton for export, in exchange for the manufactured goods of England. The same free trade policy applied to Ireland, years ago, has ruined her, has changed her from a thrifty and prosperous country to be one os the most impoverished, unhappy, and worst governed countries on the face of the civil ized globe, has reduced her population in the last forty years from 8, ,000, 900 to 5,0O0,- GOO, and driven her children into exile in order that they might live at all. Free trade, he adds, that was fought for in the war was based on slave labor. To-day it only means the same thing except in name. It rleans iIl-paid, impoverished labor of all kinds, whether of the mechanic or the farmer. The Democratic party have not and will not give up free trade. They have always kept up agitation for changes in the tariff, the only effect of which has been to keep back our growth and to unsettle business.
 MT. Condon does not find it necessary to go abroad to learn the comparative effects of free trade and protection on industry and the earnings of industry. He points out that States which have taken hold of the American idea heartily and with all their might have prospered, and those which have not have fallen behind in the race. Tennessee and Pennsylvania are selected by MT. Condon as two States for comparison, both being of about equal natural wealth. In 1860 the value of the farms in Tennessee was $271, 000, ,000; in 1880, their value had fallen to $2O6, ,O0O, ,000. In Pennsylvania farms were worth $662, ,05O, TOT in 1860, and in twenty years the value had increased to $975, 5,689,- 40. Pennsylvania had invested $475, ,000,- 900 in manufactures, and in 1880 paid $134, ,- 900, ,000 in wages to 387, 900 employees s, used $465, 100000 worth of material, and turned out $744, SIS, ,445 of manu- factured product. In the same year Tennes- see had only $20, ,O92, ,845 invested in manu- factures, employing g, 2,245 persons, who re- ceived in wages $5.254, ,755, the manufactured product amounting to $37, ,044, ,886. And yet, notwithstanding the difference in the value of agricultural lands, Tennessee has almost as many people employed in agriculture as Pennsylvania, while it would be a libel on the vast but undeveloped natural wealth of the former State to call it inferior to that of the great northern commonwealth of iron and coal.
 Mir. Condon urges that it is high time for the farmers, mechanics, merchants, maRu- faeturers and everybody else togo in for the American policy that has paid SO well, and to quit the old free-trade policy that has blighted everything it has touched, and he adds that the Republican party has fought for the American policy; the Democratic party for free trade. The fight is still on, as the Morrison bill showed. This is the situa- tion, and it especially behooyes the people of Mir Condon's own section to realize it.