The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

Leaving the hall on the conclusion of his speech he went to his law office and began work on a case. It was while thus engaged, and after Lamb had also withdrawn in his favor, that the stenographer, answering the telephone, turned to him in surprise with the exclamation—“Why, Mr. Kern, you have just been nominated for the senate.”

His first inclination was to refuse the nomination. But the fact that it was so manifestly the spontaneous will of the party and the urgent insistence of the avowed candidates that he face a duty finally persuaded him against his will. Almost in a flash all his plans for a peaceful life in the practice of his profession were ruins at his feet, and he again, as so many times before, put on the armor and prepared for battle.

III

The senatorial campaign in Indiana in 1910 was unique in the political history of the state. Senator Albert J. Beveridge was the nominee of the Republican party for re-election, although his position with his own party was precariously insecure. He had entered public life as an aggressive and brilliant exponent of the more pronounced Hamiltonian theories, and had been a consistent champion of Big Business, an audacious defender and eulogist of the trust, an eloquent advocate of the protective tariff, and in other ways, viewed from the Democratic viewpoint, a peculiarly advanced and defiant reactionary. But he had rebelled against the Aldrich senatorial machine when it threw even discretion in the winds in its arrogant determination to force the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill upon the country, and had joined Dolliver, Cummins, Bristow, Clapp and Lafollette in the fight against it. This he had done with his usual brilliancy and eloquence, and he had thus incurred the deadly enmity of the reactionary element of his party in the state. Unhappily for him this was the predominant element. His one hope under the circumstances was that his courageous act of rebellion would rally to his support the progressive element of the Democratic party and thus make up for any loss from the Republicans. This plan, however, contemplated the creation of the impression among the progressives that the election of a Democratic legislature would result in the election of a reactionary to the senate, and his supporters had two or three men in mind to hold forth to the people as likely beneficiaries of a Democratic victory. The action of the state convention in nominating a candidate overthrew all these well-laid plans. The nomination of Kern, nationally known as a progressive, was the last straw. Little wonder that Senator Beveridge, in writing to Governor Marshall after the adoption of “the governor’s plan,” said “You have broken my heart.” But thus handicapped he prepared to contest every inch of the ground, and no man has ever made a more thorough and brilliant campaign.

Kern opened the campaign in a strong speech at Evansville on October 1st. It was a powerful presentation of the issues involved in the unique campaign in which a Republican senator was appealing for support on the strength of his repudiation of the policies of his party while urging the retention of that party in power. The action of Beveridge in voting for the ship subsidy bill and against the income tax was used with deadly effect, as was the insistence of some of the senator’s friends, such as Charles G. Sefrit, of The Washington Herald, that had the vote of the senator been necessary to the passage of the Payne-Aldrich bill he would have supported it. All his references to his opponent were directed by Mr. Kern to an effort to compromise his position as a contender for the progressive vote, and the senator had been too intimately identified with Republican policies to make this difficult. The last half of his speech was consumed in a denunciation of the extravagant expenditures by Republican congresses and the misuse of the taxing power.

The speech was considered extraordinarily adroit and forceful. The Indianapolis News, a Republican paper, never friendly to the senator, in an editorial analysis of Mr. Kern’s discussion of the senator’s progressive pretentions, managed to insinuate an interrogation of its own and concluded by saying: “What Mr. Kern had to say of governmental extravagance was well said. He argued that extravagance and protection are related to each other, that protection is itself extravagance. On the whole Mr. Kern’s speech is a strong and fair statement of the Democratic position. This is manifestly a campaign in which the speakers on both sides are going to deal with real things and real issues. The truth is that the people are tired of the old buncombe, a fact which the campaigners evidently appreciate. The question in Indiana is whether the people will believe that the insurgents are strong enough to change the course of their party, which they admit to have been wrong, and to free it from influences that have long dominated it, which they confess to be abhorrent. And that is a question which each man must answer for himself, with the help of such information as he may be able to get. It gives us pleasure to commend the speech of Mr. Kern as a straightforward and manly presentation of the Democratic case.”

Mr. Bryan telegraphed: “Your speech was a powerful statement and much stronger both in substance and manner to that of your opponent.”

During the next month Mr. Kern was constantly on the stump, speaking afternoon and night, accompanied usually by correspondents of Indianapolis papers upon whom the personality of the candidate made an agreeable impression, if we are to judge by the tone of their articles. In this way his speeches were given the widest possible publicity. As the campaign progressed his reiterated questionings of Senator Beveridge’s position as a progressive led the latter to taking a more advanced position than in the beginning, and this served to further embitter the Republican reactionaries. In speech after speech Kern dwelt upon the senator’s vote in favor of a ship subsidy until toward the close of the campaign Mr. Beveridge was forced to pledge himself against a similar performance. Never, perhaps, has Senator Beveridge been more eloquent, more daring and dashing than in the campaign of 1910. He preferred to look upon his rôle as that of a crusader, and he did smite the reactionaries hip and thigh. As the heat of the battle increased this crusading feature was emphasized until the sentimental reached a climax in the declaration of Fred Landis, an orator noted for his quaint humor, that Beveridge, holding the plutocrats at bay, was standing for “Mary of the vine-clad cottage.” This symbolizing of the humble lot was instantly seized upon by the senator’s crusading friends, and even the senator adopted “Mary,” until Kern turned it into ridicule in a speech at Decatur which caused a roar of laughter from river to lake. In satire and ridicule Kern had no equal in the state, and he used his weapons on occasions with much effectiveness. His satire on Mary was copied in The New York Sun, and as long as the present generation lingers on the stage “Mary of the vine-clad cottage” will bring a smile.

The two candidates, while strenuously engaged on the stump themselves, had some outside assistance. Mr. Roosevelt swept across northern Indiana in behalf of Beveridge, but some unpleasantness of a mysterious nature diverted popular discussion from what he said to the fact that he refused to leave his car to address a great throng at Richmond. The two former presidential nominees of the Democratic party, and both personal friends, Alton B. Parker and Mr. Bryan entered the state in behalf of Mr. Kern. In his speech at Indianapolis the middle of October Judge Parker told his hearers that in the senate “we shall need the common sense, the sturdy honesty and eloquence of John W. Kern.” And about the same time Bryan was sweeping over the state in a characteristic whirlwind of oratory, addressing a dozen audiences a day and everywhere making a special plea for the election of Kern.

Thus in the struggle for the progressive vote the advantage was all with Kern. There was no possible reason why any progressive of the Democratic party should vote against Kern, and while the Republican progressives were intensely loyal to Beveridge they were in the minority, and the Republican reactionaries were bent upon the destruction of the man who had refused to bend beneath the Aldrich lash. It is doubtful if any man has ever been the victim of greater treachery than Beveridge in 1910. There was scarcely a community where the Republican politicians were not whetting their knives for his slaughter. The result was easily foreseen and the Democrats carried the legislature.