II
While the convention was acting Mr. Kern sat alone in his room at the Albany smoking. His first act on learning of his nomination when enthusiastic Hoosier friends burst in upon him was to send a telegram to his family at Indianapolis—“Have just now been nominated. God bless you all.” Within a few minutes after the convention acted he began to pay the penalty of the celebrity thrust upon him. The crowds flocked to his room in such numbers that he was finally forced to make his escape to Mr. Taggart’s room in the Brown Palace, but almost immediately afterward his hiding place was discovered by Senator Gore and thereafter no further effort was made to find a place of retirement. Among the first telegrams that reached him was the one that meant more perhaps than any other—from Mr. Bryan:
“Lincoln, Neb., July 10.
“Hon. John W. Kern, Denver, Colo.:
“Accept my warmest congratulations. Your nomination gratifies me very much. We have a splendid platform and I am glad to have a running mate in such complete harmony with the platform. Stop off and see us on your way east.
“William Jennings Bryan.”
Addressing a delegation of returning Nebraskans soon afterwards, Mr. Bryan said:
“I am sure that when people come to know John W. Kern as I have known him for many years, they will believe, as I do, that he is in perfect harmony with the platform, and can be trusted to carry out that platform to the letter, if circumstances should place upon him the responsibility for its enforcement.”
Into his retreat at the Brown Palace the crowds thronged. The newspaper men with their cameras and note books appeared and the candidate, with his customary amiability, submitted to being cross-examined as to the most intimate details of his life. The Denver Times was much impressed because Kern did not “talk in the Hoosier dialect”—a puzzle that was solved to its satisfaction by the discovery that his father was a Virginian and he, as a boy, had lived in Iowa. Other papers solemnly assured their readers that he was the original of “The Man From Home” of Booth Tarkington’s creation. The nomination of Bryan having been a foregone conclusion, the vice-presidential nominee became the chief topic of conversation, and that night Kern was being discussed almost exclusively by the politicians in hotel lobbies, cafés and upon the streets. An interview on the nomination by as astute an observer as Herbert Quick, of Iowa, gives as accurate an appraisement of the atmosphere in which it was made as can be found. “The nomination of Mr. Kern was widely favored,” he said, “in my section of the middle west long before the convention. He is regarded as a man whose high character and place of residence would add strength to the ticket. He will not be regarded as an unknown or an accident. I watched the convention as it nominated Kern and mingled in the groups engaged in the preliminary discussions. No one was ever nominated in an atmosphere freer from dickering and trading. The galleries were for Kern and the galleries have a curious faculty of feeling the national pulse.”
He remained in Denver for a time so as to reach Lincoln just in time for the meeting of the national committee at Fairview on July 14th, and during the interval was kept busy conferring with party leaders and with social engagements. I was with him on the train on the return trip as far as Lincoln and had an opportunity to note the effect the new celebrity had upon him. If anything, and if possible, he was even more democratic, genuinely democratic, in his manner, and a trifle subdued, as though he felt the responsibility that would fall to him in meeting his share of the burdens of the campaign. The night his party left Denver he stayed up late keeping his companions in mirthful mood with a seemingly interminable string of stories gleaned from his own experiences. It was on the train that he first had an opportunity to read the Indianapolis papers and learn of the joy and jubilation of his friends and neighbors of both parties and of the plans of his old Kokomo friends to tender him a great reception. These things seemed to touch him more than the honor of the nomination.
Again he reached Lincoln in the night, this time at three o’clock in the morning, but this time he was met by a delegation of citizens and taken to the hotel. Before he was up in the morning a large crowd was at the hotel to greet him, and for a time, as the press put it, “the town went Kern mad.”
About noon on the day of his arrival he went to Fairview on the car, receiving ovations along the way, and he remained at the home of Mr. Bryan through the afternoon meeting party leaders. During that afternoon, too, in a campaign conference with Mr. Bryan, a plan was determined upon that was destined to make the Bryan and Kern campaign of 1908 memorable and of vital importance to the nation regardless of the result of the election, for it was then decided to pledge the party to giving publicity to campaign contributions before the election, and to limit the amount that could be subscribed by any one party.
On the following day when the members of the national committee had been called to order at Fairview, Mr. Bryan, when called upon, referring to Mr. Kern in the course of his brief speech, said:
“I desire to express ... my gratitude that a candidate for vice-president has been selected who is not only a political friend and a personal friend, but one in whom I have entire confidence (applause). I do not know how I can better express my feeling on the subject than to say that if I am elected president and Mr. Kern is elected vice-president, I shall not be afraid to die, because I shall feel that the policies outlined in the platform, which I shall endeavor to put into operation, will be just as faithfully carried out by him as they would be by me.” (Applause.)
Mr. Bryan then presented his history-making proposal which had been discussed by him with Mr. Kern the previous afternoon:
“We suggest for your approval a maximum of $10,000 and a minimum of $100, no contribution to be received above $10,000 and all contributions above $100 to be made public before the election.
“We suggest, also, that on or before the 15th day of October, publication shall be made of all contributions above $100 received up to that date; that after the 15th of October publication shall be made of such contributions on the day that the same are received, and that no contribution above $100 shall be accepted within three days of the election.
“With the hope that these suggestions may be favorably acted upon, we are, with great respect, etc.,
“Yours truly,
“William Jennings Bryan,
“John W. Kern.”
Thus the first act of Mr. Kern as a candidate was to affix his signature to a proposal destined, after much controversy and sophisticated efforts to escape, to be written into the law of the land. After Mr. Kern had spoken briefly, a resolution embodying the ideas of the proposal was submitted by Josephus Daniels of North Carolina and unanimously adopted. History was made at Fairview that afternoon. An issue of such vital moment was then made that it would not down. And the issue was all the more direct because a Republican congress had just refused to enact a publicity law, the Republican national convention had refused to incorporate in its platform a provision for one, and the announcement of the Fairview plan was at first ridiculed by the reactionary press of the country. But the issue was so clear that it could not be scoffed from the boards. Mr. Taft tried to meet it by reforming on his original selection of a treasurer of his campaign committee, and that, failing to satisfy the independent press, he tried to offset the Fairview program with a proposal of publicity of contributions after the election. This was so manifestly absurd that it failed utterly to satisfy, notwithstanding President Roosevelt’s remarkable advocacy of the proposal of Taft to lock the stable after the horse was stolen. The impression made by the plan outlined at the conference between Bryan and Kern at Fairview that afternoon was so pronounced that the popular demand for a law of that character persisted, and finally under the administration of Mr. Taft, who had opposed it, it was written into law at the behest of an overwhelming public opinion. That incident alone, aside from the platform, makes the Bryan-Kern campaign of 1908 one of vital value to the institutions of America.
On the evening of the day of the adoption of this resolution, Mr. Kern and his party turned their faces toward home—and here he was to partake of the sweets of his triumph.