IV
During the same summer Senator Kern made his heaviest contribution to humanity in the part he played in forcing the consideration and passage of the child labor law. This was a subject that had been near his heart for many years, and we have seen that almost a quarter of a century before while a member of the state senate he had fought to place a child labor law upon the statutes of the state. For many years efforts were made from time to time to pass a child labor law, but without results. The public opinion of the republic had long been crystallized against the exploitation of childhood, and social workers had accumulated the most damning evidence against the system, but the statesmen seemed impervious to the pity of it, and cynically found excuses for non-activity. But a few years before Senator Kern had listened to the witnesses called by the House committee investigating the strike in the mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and had been sickened by the sight of pale, aenemic, underfed, overworked children who were actually forced to pay for the cold water that they drank while at work in the mills. He hated the exploitation of childhood with a holy hate, and one of his ambitions was to be able to strike a blow at the system while in the senate.
One day in the summer of 1916, at a time when senators and congressmen were anxious to get back to their constituents in preparation for the campaign, and with the program already crowded, the congress and the country were electrified by the action of President Wilson in demanding action upon the child labor bill then pending in the senate. Without warning he appeared at the capitol one afternoon and repaired to the president’s room, where he had grown accustomed to hold important conferences on legislation, contrary to the custom of his predecessor, and summoned Senator Kern. The senator was first informed of the president’s presence at the capitol by a page who had been hailed by the executive and asked if he would inform Senator Kern that he was wanted in the little room, with its Brumidi decorations, beyond the Marble Room. There was a brief conference, after which other senators were summoned, and the word flashed over the country that the president had created another stumbling block to adjournment by insisting upon the passage of the child labor law. From that time on Kern exerted himself to the utmost in pressing for action.
But behind that incident there was another which throws more light on the importance of the part played by Senator Kern in forcing a child labor law upon the books. Some time before the Democratic senators had held a caucus to determine upon the legislative program for the remainder of the session, and Kern had made an earnest plea for the consideration of the child labor bill. He had met with a stubborn opposition, for there were states represented in that caucus in which the factories were operated to a large degree by child labor. Indeed it had come to be a favorite sneer of the socialists that the Democratic party could never be counted upon to rid the nation of that evil because of the opposition of the industrial interests of certain southern states. In the caucus Senator Kern not only urged this as a political reason for action, and made a personal appeal on the ground that failure to act would probably lose Indiana to the Democracy in the campaign of the fall and defeat him for re-election. But the opponents of such legislation were adamant and the caucus adjourned with no provision for child labor legislation and with the decision to not take up the immigration bill until in December.
Soon after this President Wilson made his call at the capitol; and a little later a few Democratic senators, regardless of the caucus action, voted to call the immigration bill before the senate, and the protest of Senator Kern, together with the excoriation of the recalcitrant senators by Senator Stone, impelled the men who disregarded the caucus action to defend themselves. In the course of Senator Vardaman’s defense he dropped the curtain on the proceedings of the caucus, and incidentally threw light on the prominence of the part played by Senator Kern in forcing labor legislation upon the statutes.
“I remember distinctly,” he said, “that the senior senator from Indiana stated to the caucus that a failure to pass the child labor bill would militate very much against the Democratic party in Indiana and would probably defeat him for re-election. But the caucus adjourned with a program agreed upon which left out the consideration at this session of the child labor and immigration bills. The next morning I heard that the distinguished senator from Indiana—the Democratic leader, mind you—was very much dissatisfied with the caucus action and was busily engaging himself trying to create sentiment in favor of rescinding the action of the caucus of the evening before. It was also whispered that the president would be invited to take a hand in order to save the senator from Indiana from the evil effects of non-action upon the child labor bill. The correctness of these rumors was soon verified. In due time the president of the United States appeared at the capitol and called certain senators into consultation. But as to what he said—or ordered—I am not at liberty to speak, since I was not one of the senators consulted.”
We can do no better than permit the Mississippi senator to serve us as reporter of Senator Kern’s position in the caucus, and his activities after the caucus to bring about such a reconsideration as to include in the program for the session the consideration of the child labor bill. And the Mississippian’s interpretation of the action of the president, it may be added, was shared by others who were chagrined at his interference in the program. However that may be, it may be said that Senator Kern and the president were in whole-hearted accord on the child labor bill and that their joint work was largely responsible for the passage of the bill.
That the country generally at the time looked upon Kern as the leader in the fight for the child labor bill was soon evident in the disposition of both the friends and enemies of the proposed legislation to attempt to influence him through propaganda. While it had always been his policy to submit petitions and protests to the senate, regardless of his individual opinion on the matter involved, on the broad ground that the people were entitled to the right of petition, so profound was his hate of child exploitation and so intense his contempt for those who tried to prevent it, that he refused to burden the Record with the protests. In only one instance did he give any attention to the letters of the defenders of the exploiters of childhood. A minister in a southern community had written him a sanctimoniously worded letter on the beauties of child slavery, on the philanthropy of the mill owners in preventing the starvation of families by permitting children scarcely in their teens to work for a pittance in the mills, and this aroused his wrath because it came from a minister of the Gospel. For ministerial defenders of inhumanity he had no words with which to measure his contempt. In this instance he did attempt to give expression to his personal contempt for the minister in a letter of withering sarcasm, and this letter he gave to the press. Among the men of importance who wired him in the interest of the bill were Charles W. Eliot, the famous educator, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the Rev. Lyman Abbott of The Outlook, and he put their pleas in the Record. Of especial value, from his point of view, as supporting the position he had taken in the caucus when he had been outvoted by his party colleagues, was the telegram of President Eliot:
“I venture to express the opinion, in view of the coming presidential election, it would be very unwise to postpone the passage of the child labor bill until December next. The Democratic party needs the support next November of the numerous Republicans and progressives who are interested in child labor legislation. The party has nothing to lose by passing the bill and possibly much to gain.”
This view Kern persistently pressed upon such Democratic senators as held back, and the bill was finally taken up and passed with so little opposition on the floor as to be a marvel to those who had striven for a decade to interest the congress in such legislation. Here, as in many other cases, the work of Senator Kern was effective and important, but not done in the limelight, and the general public in rejoicing over the enactment of the law manifested no special appreciation of the services of Kern. This did not concern him in the least. It was enough for him to know that the blow at child slavery had been struck. In his speeches in the campaign of 1916 he dwelt to some extent upon the passage of the child labor bill, but never once did he give any indication that his part in its passage was greater than that of the senator who merely voted for the bill.
Nevertheless his was an important and a leading part.