II
The line of cleavage on the committee was clear very soon after the hearings began. Feeling as he did early in the proceedings, that a majority of the committee would support a report favorable to the accused, Kern, intensely convinced of his guilt, keenly felt the responsibility which fell to him. This feeling was shared by two other members of the committee, Kenyon and Lea. It was during the period of the Lorimer hearing that the feeling of mutual respect and affection sprang up between the three men which continued until Senator Kern’s death. All three were new members of the senate, but Kern had a long career behind him and was more than sixty years old, while Kenyon and Lea were unusually young and comparatively new to public life. They were both of the same general type and this a type that strongly appealed to the older man—the clean-cut, buoyant, independent, courageous and incorruptible type, bubbling with the enthusiasms of youth, and ardently anxious to serve the country according to their light. Both were men of vigorous mentality, keen and alert and “spoiling for a fight” with such wrongs as might present themselves, and both were skilled lawyers and competent for the task assigned them. It was most natural that young men, new to the senate, and sharing in a desire to serve the people, should have drifted together; the fact that both drifted toward the veteran of sixty was wonderfully complimentary to the character of the older man. Their common hatred of political corruption, their common indifference to party lines where corruption was involved, their common contempt for the fetish of “senatorial courtesy” which has so frequently served a sinister end, and their common conviction of the guilt of the blond boss, gave them a common cause, and the three stood together, drawing closer all the while, throughout the long-drawn battle. When the committee was not in session the two younger senators frequently called at Kern’s office for informal discussions of the evidence. “My boys,” Kern called them. And to a somewhat less degree he became strongly attached to John Marble, the brilliant young lawyer employed by the committee as counsel. The fervor and whole-heartedness with which the lawyer threw himself into the preparation of his case and into the cross-examination of witnesses early won his admiration. He loved youth, with its shining armor, and especially when he conceived it to be “fighting the battles of the Lord.” The brunt of the actual battle against Lorimerism was thus waged by youth grouped about the venerable statesman to whose judgment it often looked for guidance on questionable points.
And Kern was well qualified for leadership. His almost half century of participation in politics and association with politicians had left little for him to learn of the ways and wiles of the breed. He knew how the game was played according to Springfield, for that capital of Illinois had no monopoly on the combination of bi-partisan politicians with unscrupulous business interests. It was not easy to deceive him. And here, too, his unusual gift at cross-examination which had been his forte in the trial of cases all his life was to stand him in good stead. He knew men, understood human nature, and was quick in the appraisement of the character and truthfulness of witnesses. Nature, acquirements and character combined to make him an important factor in the extirpation of Lorimerism.