IX
After Mr. Ludlow no newspaper man was thrown into such frequent contact in the discharge of professional duties with Senator Kern as William H. Blodgett, who has been for so many years the political writer of The Indianapolis News. In campaign after campaign he has been assigned by his paper to cover the tours of the party leaders, and has reported all the conventions, state and national, for an equal period. He made one of the “Kern party” on practically every important tour that Kern made during the last eighteen years of his career. Mr. Blodgett’s reminiscences throw an interesting side light on the character of the senator:
“When John W. Kern answered the final call there passed out of the lives of the newspaper fraternity one with whom they were always bound by a strong chain with links of admiration, respect, honor and friendship. To them it was not the United States senator who died. It was the man whose soul had gone away; and while the newspaper men may remember for a time the public acts of John W. Kern as United States senator, so long as they live they will never forget his personal attributes, and his kind and courteous treatment of them; and the cold grave where he lies can never chill the steadfast, kindly and unfaltering friendship the men and women of the press bore him—a friendship that can not be calculated.
“It is doubtful if there is a public man between whom and the newspaper fraternity there were so many confidences. He trusted them, and they believed in him, even if they did not at all times agree with his political policies. The political writers were always pleased when they were assigned to ‘cover’ John Kern. He was the best ‘copy’ in the United States, and day or night he was always good for a story. Without journalistic experience himself, he knew just what kind of news the public wanted. He always had his ear to the ground, and many a good story for which the correspondent received a telegram of thanks from his managing editor was really worked out by Mr. Kern. He had no grades or classes among his newspaper friends—the small town reporter looked just as big to him as did the staff man from the metropolitan dailies, and he would go just as far to help the small town reporter as he would to assist the staff ‘star.’ My acquaintance with Senator Kern began long years ago when I was a small town reporter. In a particular town that need not be named a young society man had been arrested, for what no one knew. The arrest was very quietly made by Ed Rathbone, who figured years afterward in Cuban affairs, and Rathbone tried to slip his prisoner out of town, but the local reporters caught them at the railway station. With considerable curtness he refused to talk with the reporters. A man carefully dressed, and with a pleasant smile, standing near by turned to Rathbone:
“‘Ed,’ said he, ‘there is no reason why these boys shouldn’t have this item (that was before ‘items’ became dignified as ‘stories’). ‘It is in their territory and it will be interesting to the readers of their papers, and anyhow it will come out as soon as you get to Indianapolis and these boys will be scooped.’
“‘All right, John, you can tell them,’ replied Rathbone, walking away.
“‘Well, boys,’ as we gathered around him, ‘this is what it is all about’—and sitting on a baggage truck the stranger (I can see him now as plainly as I did then more than thirty years ago) he told us the story.
“‘Who are you, and what part in this affair do you take?’ one of our party asked.
“‘I’m just an innocent bystander. My name is John W. Kern. I am a lawyer up at Kokomo, and I bumped into this thing accidentally.’ Some of the small town reporters clustered about that baggage truck listening to Mr. Kern’s recital of the story of the young man’s arrest in later years became well known in journalistic work, and the friendship for Mr. Kern that began on the railway platform was never broken. Mr. Kern never changed that policy of dealing with newspaper men. The correspondents who campaigned with Mr. Kern were always sure of fair and equal treatment. He played no favorites. When he gave out a story every one got it. Knowing that a careless or indifferent reporter, or a representative of an unfriendly paper could cause him great annoyance, and perhaps deep injury by not truthfully quoting him, or twisting his language to a meaning other than what he intended to say, Mr. Kern never asked the correspondents with him to submit their dispatches before putting them on the wire. He was willing to trust to their fairness and honor.
“‘Gentlemen,’ he would say at the beginning of the tour, ‘I won’t say anything that I do not wish published, and I know you won’t send anything I don’t say.’ And among the hundreds of correspondents who ‘covered’ Mr. Kern in his long political career not one ever disappointed him. When John W. Kern was the principal figure in the noise and music of the feast the newspaper men with him were never forgotten. Reception committees might try to drag him away, but he would not be dragged.
“‘There will be no show,’ he used to tell the eager committeemen, each striving for the honor of leading him to his carriage or to the speaker’s stand, ‘until the orchestra is ready. I want the newspaper men put where they can see and hear.’ And he would not move until the correspondents with him were provided for. Once he was dragged to a boarding house by the reception committee, who thought it would be a good political stroke to have Mr. Kern take dinner with the boarding house keeper who was off the county ticket. The newspaper men returning from the telegraph office were met at the gate by Mr. Kern.
“‘Boys,’ he whispered, ‘don’t come in here. The grub is ghastly and the board of health has gone fishing. If you must eat in this town go to the hotel.’
“In his campaigns Mr. Kern always prepared a schedule of his own itinerary, and used to fret a great deal if trains were late or wheeled transportation was not promptly on hand. He was always called in the morning at least an hour before train time, and part of his regular work before breakfast was to see that the baggage of the correspondents was ready to be taken to the station—he would not trust anybody but himself to look after the baggage, and he was always impatient until breakfast was served. At one hotel the waiter was slow because the waiter and cook were one and the same. Mr. Kern’s watch was propped against a glass of water on the table. He became nervous and restless and finally shouted to the landlord, who was sweeping out the office:
“‘Pete, I’ve only got fifteen minutes to make that train—can’t you hurry breakfast a little?’
“‘Don’t worry, John,’ came back through the dust clouds in the office. ‘You can eat all there is in the house and still have plenty of time for your train.’
“This put Mr. Kern in a good humor, and he made his railroad connection all right.
“On another occasion the party with Mr. Kern had to cross a small river on an old-fashioned ferry. In midstream the rope broke and the craft began floating on the current. Mr. Kern struck up ‘Life on the Ocean Wave’ and the correspondents joined in with him. It was the first time correspondents knew Senator Kern was a singer, and for that matter none of them ever heard him attempt to sing again. Kin Hubbard, who was in the party, drew a cartoon of the float down the river for The Indianapolis News, which pleased Mr. Kern greatly and he always declared that the cartoon was Hubbard’s masterpiece.
“He had a most wonderful memory for names, faces and incidents, and his speeches were generally punctuated with entertaining stories, a greater part of which he usually located in the vicinity of Kokomo. There was always a story to properly illustrate a point, and if the anecdote related by John W. Kern could be compiled in one volume it would make a book as huge as Webster’s Unabridged. And these stories were not of a kind that offended or hurt, and the occasion for their use was always appropriate. He had a way, too, of rebuilding a speech with new words, and sometimes the correspondents who were with him perhaps for weeks and had heard him speak many times would burden the wires with a warmed-over speech, to the distraction of the managing editors and the delight of the copy editors, whose mission is to knock and destroy.
“When Mr. Kern was the nominee for vice-president on the Democratic ticket he was frequently alluded to by Republican papers as ‘Alfalfa John.’ But there are only a few people who know that Mr. Kern himself was the originator of the term. We landed at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago direct from Denver and Mr. Kern gave audience to a large number of reporters, and among them several ‘sob sisters’ (which is the craft name for women journalists). One of these, a piquant little creature with fluffy hair from The Chicago Tribune, startled the nominee for vice-president by suddenly asking:
“‘Mr. Kern, what is the actual color of your whiskers?’
“‘I really don’t know,’ replied Mr. Kern in all seriousness, ‘I have never seen them, except in a mirror, and you know how deceptive looking glasses are after one has past forty years. Down in Kokomo, Indiana, the boys call them alfalfa.’
“The next morning a splendid word portrait of Mr. Kern appeared in The Tribune in which he was portrayed as ‘Alfalfa John,’ and the name clung to him all through the campaign.
“To write the full story of campaigning with John W. Kern would be to write many pages of political history. Ambitious perhaps he was, but I have known many instances where he smothered his own ambitions to advance the interest of his own political party. He never was called that he did not answer, and he never was asked to go that he failed. I have known him, tired and weary and racked with pain, to crawl from his bed at three o’clock in the morning and ride miles that he might address children at a country school house, who were anxious to hear him. All through his political campaigns, strenuous as some of them were, his kindly disposition, his inexplicable sweetness of manner, was never ruffled. I never knew him to say a cross word, even in his most impatient moments, and the blare of bands and the pomp of political parades he never forgot his home. At Denver, when his nomination for vice-president was assured, when statesmen were trying to grasp his hand, and a platoon of newspaper men were climbing over each other to get a word with him, Mr. Kern turned to me:
“‘Won’t you please telegraph the good news to Mrs. Kern,’ he said.
“‘Certainly, but what shall I say?’
“‘I don’t need to tell you how happy I am, or what word to send to my wife—you have a wife at home—just tell my wife what you would say to your wife under the same circumstances.’
“That was John W. Kern, honest, trusting, with faith in his friends, and with the picture of his home ever before him. The newspaper fraternity lost a good friend when Death ushered John W. Kern through the Gates of Life.
“We all must die.
And leave ourselves, no, it matters not where, when
Nor how, so we die well; and can that man that does
Need lamentation for him.”