Again he reached Lincoln in the night, this time at three o’clock in the morning, but this time he was met by a delegation of citizens and taken to the hotel. Before he was up in the morning a large crowd was at the hotel to greet him, and for a time, as the press put it, “the town went Kern mad.”
About noon on the day of his arrival he went to Fairview on the car, receiving ovations along the way, and he remained at the home of Mr. Bryan through the afternoon meeting party leaders. During that afternoon, too, in a campaign conference with Mr. Bryan, a plan was determined upon that was destined to make the Bryan and Kern campaign of 1908 memorable and of vital importance to the nation regardless of the result of the election, for it was then decided to pledge the party to giving publicity to campaign contributions before the election, and to limit the amount that could be subscribed by any one party.
On the following day when the members of the national committee had been called to order at Fairview, Mr. Bryan, when called upon, referring to Mr. Kern in the course of his brief speech, said:
“I desire to express ... my gratitude that a candidate for vice-president has been selected who is not only a political friend and a personal friend, but one in whom I have entire confidence (applause). I do not know how I can better express my feeling on the subject than to say that if I am elected president and Mr. Kern is elected vice-president, I shall not be afraid to die, because I shall feel that the policies outlined in the platform, which I shall endeavor to put into operation, will be just as faithfully carried out by him as they would be by me.” (Applause.)
Mr. Bryan then presented his history-making proposal which had been discussed by him with Mr. Kern the previous afternoon:
“We suggest for your approval a maximum of $10,000 and a minimum of $100, no contribution to be received above $10,000 and all contributions above $100 to be made public before the election.
“We suggest, also, that on or before the 15th day of October, publication shall be made of all contributions above $100 received up to that date; that after the 15th of October publication shall be made of such contributions on the day that the same are received, and that no contribution above $100 shall be accepted within three days of the election.
“With the hope that these suggestions may be favorably acted upon, we are, with great respect, etc.,
“Yours truly,
“William Jennings Bryan,
“John W. Kern.”
Thus the first act of Mr. Kern as a candidate was to affix his signature to a proposal destined, after much controversy and sophisticated efforts to escape, to be written into the law of the land. After Mr. Kern had spoken briefly, a resolution embodying the ideas of the proposal was submitted by Josephus Daniels of North Carolina and unanimously adopted. History was made at Fairview that afternoon. An issue of such vital moment was then made that it would not down. And the issue was all the more direct because a Republican congress had just refused to enact a publicity law, the Republican national convention had refused to incorporate in its platform a provision for one, and the announcement of the Fairview plan was at first ridiculed by the reactionary press of the country. But the issue was so clear that it could not be scoffed from the boards. Mr. Taft tried to meet it by reforming on his original selection of a treasurer of his campaign committee, and that, failing to satisfy the independent press, he tried to offset the Fairview program with a proposal of publicity of contributions after the election. This was so manifestly absurd that it failed utterly to satisfy, notwithstanding President Roosevelt’s remarkable advocacy of the proposal of Taft to lock the stable after the horse was stolen. The impression made by the plan outlined at the conference between Bryan and Kern at Fairview that afternoon was so pronounced that the popular demand for a law of that character persisted, and finally under the administration of Mr. Taft, who had opposed it, it was written into law at the behest of an overwhelming public opinion. That incident alone, aside from the platform, makes the Bryan-Kern campaign of 1908 one of vital value to the institutions of America.