V
The reference to the Nicholson law was thoroughly understood by all his hearers. In the campaign of 1894 the Republicans had laid claim to being the party of temperance and had held forth the promise to the temperance people that a Republican assembly would mean temperance legislation. This pretense was accepted at face value by the temperance workers. At the same time it was generally understood that one of the Republican leaders had entered into a secret understanding with the “wets” at Evansville that any temperance measure presented would be either pigeonholed or passed in a form that would make it utterly worthless for its purpose. Soon after the legislature met Representative Nicholson had introduced his bill and the game of hide and go seek was on. Seldom if ever have more exciting scenes been witnessed about the state house during a legislative session than those of this period. On days when it was known that any phase of the bill would be discussed in either branch of the assembly the galleries were packed to overflowing and great throngs jostled about in the corridors. The temperance forces were organized and awake. In the pulpits of the capital on Sundays the ministers demanded the passage of the bill. This general interest was embarrassing to the Republican politicians, who had not counted upon being called on to do their tricks of legislative legerdemain in the white light of publicity. There was no opportunity to stop the progress of the bill in the house, but when it reached the senate it was referred to the temperance committee, whose chairman, strangely enough, was notoriously unfriendly to temperance legislation. Here it was expected to slumber—and here it slumbered for quite a while.
It was at this juncture that Kern entered the story. At this time he held the traditional views of the Indiana Democracy on the subject of personal liberty and sumptuary legislation. He was himself a teetotaler. But he had a profound contempt for hypocrisy, and in his fight to expose the perfidy of the double-dealing policy of the opposition it is probable that he, more than any other one man, was responsible for the passage of the Nicholson law.
On March 4th, toward the close of the session, he threw a bomb into the opposition camp by offering a resolution instructing the temperance committee to have the bill before the senate, with or without recommendation, by 3 o’clock on the following afternoon. This did not harmonize with the plans of the committee or its chairman, but the resolution was adopted and the fun commenced. The Evansville agreement had been given a tremendous jolt. The temperance forces took their cue and flocked to the senate. The white light of publicity began to beat unmercifully upon the proceedings. Taken unaware and not yet prepared to submit a report the committee on the following day asked for another day’s delay, which was granted over the protest of ten members led by Kern, who jocularly moved after the vote was taken that a committee be appointed “to draft resolutions of respect for the late lamented Nicholson law.” These tactics, by casting suspicion of the sincerity of pretended friends of the measure, made further delay impossible, and on the following day the bill was reported with amendments. After this Kern applied himself to amendments. He was one of four who voted in favor of permitting the saloons to remain open until midnight in cities having a population of 25,000 and over. And he followed this by his own amendment, known as the “drug store amendment,” for which he has always been remembered. This provided that it should be unlawful for any spirituous, vinous or malt liquors to be sold or given away in drug stores except on the written prescription of a reputable physician. This amendment was adopted and a motion to reconsider was lost. When the bill as amended went to a vote Kern was one of nine who voted against it.
But this was not to be the end of the fight. In the house the Kern amendment was rejected and in conference the amendment was changed to read that in drug stores liquor should not be sold or given away without prescription in any quantity less than a quart. When the conference report was submitted in the senate Kern made an onslaught on the drug store proviso as changed, resulting in a spirited debate which gave him an opportunity to attack the sincerity of the majority. Accused of introducing the drug store amendment in the interest of the saloons, he demanded to know whether the bill was intended “to advance the cause of temperance or mainly for the purpose of legislating against one business in favor of another,” and in a scathing denunciation of the spirit of hypocrisy he pictured the sanctimonious double-dealer, well known at that time, who loftily attacked the saloon while stopping at the corner drug store on his way home from church for his dram or bottle behind the prescription case.
That the dominant party’s plans had been sadly disarranged by Kern’s activities was disclosed in its resentment toward him manifested in the passage of a resolution two days after the passage of the bill “extending on behalf of the majority our thanks to the minority and the governor for their assistance in passing the Nicholson law, and especially to Senator Kern of Marion for his drug store amendment to said bill, which he failed to honor by his affirmative vote.”
This resolution was not a mere bit of jocularity, but an attempt to at least neutralize the responsibility of the Republican party in violating the Evansville pledge to the “wets.” Governor Matthews had taken no part in the fight and had merely signed the bill when presented to him in due course for his signature, and the introduction of his name was merely intended to call the attention of the “wets” to the fact that a Democratic governor had signed and not vetoed it. And the special reference to Kern was in line with the excuse made to the “wets” for failure to smother the bill or to hopelessly emasculate it that but for his resolution calling upon the committee to report it would not have seen the light of day. In this they succeeded. There was never a time after that when Kern was not looked upon as unfriendly by the so-called liberal element, and his mandatory resolution compelling a report on the Nicholson bill was always given as evidence of his hostility. As a matter of fact he was not in favor of the bill. He expressed his views in his vote on the final passage. But the Republican leaders had solemnly pledged the party to genuine temperance legislation and had been overwhelmingly placed in power with that understanding—at the same time receiving the support of the liberals through a secret understanding. The hypocrisy of their position disgusted Kern, who deliberately set about to compel them to legislate in accordance with pre-election promises to the temperance forces whose support they had received, or to expose their hypocrisy. He succeeded in both, and he was never forgiven by either the Republican politicians or the liberals. It is not recorded either that he ever profited greatly from the temperance people. But he satisfied himself.
All in all the session of 1895 was one of the most vicious in the history of the commonwealth. The charges made by Kern in his speech against the gerrymander were true. It was literally true that the Burns’ statutes purchased with the state’s money for the state, to be used during the session by members, were actually stolen and carried away. But he might have added that there have been few sessions of the Indiana legislature during which there was so much general talk of the corrupt use of money. The hotels swarmed with lobbyists, and even the female lobbyist, a rather rare species at that time in Indiana, made her appearance, and in one instance created something of a scandal by being ejected from a hotel. Until then most of the lobbying had been done in the capitol, openly, but this session ushered in a new departure—the lobbyists did their work in hotels and other places.
This ended Kern’s career in the state senate. It had profited him greatly in that it had presented to the Democracy of the state a new Kern—a Kern seasoned, sobered by experience, who retained his youthful fire, intensity and eloquence. He entered the senate personally popular and widely known, but generally looked upon as a merely effective campaign speaker; he left it a recognized leader of the party in the state.
The estimate of his colleagues has been furnished me by Hon. M. A. Sweeney of Jasper, who served with him:
“He was by common consent, and without the least assumption on his part, the admired and beloved leader of our party there. I feel fully justified in asserting that no member on either side of that body of legislators ever questioned his mental superiority, personal integrity or magnanimity. In that arena of public debate, in which the flow and ebb of acrimonious clashings in verbal swordsmanship afford so splendid an opportunity to draw the line of cleavage between the cheap politician and the true gentleman and statesman, it was there he stood without a peer, personifying the calmness of power.
“His kind assistance to, and his painstaking patience with the embryonic, ambitious, would-be statesmen of his own or of the opposite party, were almost paternal in him; if your cause had merit, you ever found a true and helpful friend. No matter how arduous and exacting his senatorial duties were, and they were multifarious and onerous, he never hesitated to listen graciously to our crude ideas of state craft, and he gave very much of his valuable time in aiding and advising us in whipping into legal forms statutes the vain glory for which was worn by others, while he was always willing to remain unknown in all such affairs. He did not have an enemy in that body, and if he had it was not Senator Kern’s fault, for his suavity of manner and his courtliness of bearing toward every one won all to him.
“His arguments before the senate, or before its important committees, coming from his well-stored and well-balanced mind, always gained keen attention, for they were characterized by clearness, force, and dignity of diction; they were made to enlighten and instruct his audience, and he never permitted himself to descend to buncombe, billingsgate, specious pleading, or petty politics. His language was chaste Anglo-Saxon ‘from the pure well of English unalloyed.’ He preferred to inform his hearers by presenting plain, pertinent facts rather than to resort to the tricks of the rhetorician in order to secure the passing tribute of applause.”