The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

“You lay claim to a record of economy and yet, leaving your officers with their princely salaries, you seek to make the record good by taking food and clothing and the comforts of life from those of God’s unfortunate children who are confined in the asylum of the insane, and those who are being educated and cared for in the institutions for the deaf and dumb and blind.

“You have claimed to favor the abolishment of the spoils system from the politics of the state and yet under your legislation of this session politics has been carried into the public schools for the first time in the history of the state.”

Interruption—“How about the Nicholson law?”

Kern—“I am obliged for the interruption. The Democratic party has never posed as the great and only party of morality and temperance. The Republican party has. Do you remember your recent campaign waged under the banner—the Home Against the Saloon? If the Democratic party had made such pretenses as these I am sure its members would not, when the Nicholson bill was called, as it was yesterday, have been found running in all directions like fox chases to dodge a vote. They would have had the courage of their convictions. The Democratic party in the last campaign had no deal with the liquor element of Evansville or elsewhere. It had no entangling alliances that drove its members out of the chamber when the roll is called in order that they might dodge the consequences of a vote. Republican senators here who have been loud in their pretenses of temperance and morality in the years gone by turn pale and tremble and run like hounds at the mere mention of the Nicholson bill. At last they have been smoked from under the cover of hypocrisy and are appalled at the sight of the light of day, which is finally turned upon them.

“The end of these false pretenses is come at last.... And that is why I say that at the close of this session, with this record, it is fitting that there should come this gerrymander which in its iniquity is sufficient to cause the old original Gerry to turn in his grave at the thought of his utter incapacity in that line when compared with the modern Republican reformers of Indiana.”

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.