The peculiarly venomous and unscrupulous nature of Kern’s enemies was disclosed after the election by the suggestion that the legislature might not feel bound by the action of the state convention on the senatorship. This, of course, did not get very far. The mere suggestion damned itself, and the leaders alarmed, denounced the idea of such treachery. Governor Marshall made it clear that he would not sign the commission of any man but that of the man for whom the majority of the people had voted. There was probably never the least danger from any such suggestion. Mr. Kern took no stock in the fears of many of his friends, and the event vindicated his confidence. When the legislature met he was promptly elected. Any other result would have wrecked the Democratic party for a generation.
Thus after thirty-eight years of service and sacrifice he entered into his reward in the realization of the ambition of his life.
CHAPTER XI
Kern’s First Congress
I
SENATOR Kern entered the senate at a time when the dawn for the Democracy was breaking in the east; the long night of wandering in the wilderness was over and the day had come. In the opposite end of the capitol, the Democrats, with a triumphant majority, had made possible the election to the speakership of Champ Clark, one of the most uncompromising of Democrats and one of the most picturesque floor leaders that any party had ever had in the house. The Payne-Aldrich tariff bill had wrought such havoc that many of the old familiar figures of the congress had been swept into private life by the flood of popular indignation. The bitter fight that had been made by the Republican rebels in the senate against the iniquities of the tariff measure had left a once militant party in a state of demoralization, born of mutual distrust a desire for vengeance. There were no longer two parties in the senate—there were three, and the two of these counted as Republican were more bitter against each other than against the common enemy across the aisle. This was to be impressively disclosed early in the session, when the death of the venerable Fry of Maine necessitated the election of a president pro tempore and the Republicans with their numerical advantage were unable to muster a majority for Senator Gallenger, the caucus nominee, because the progressives, as they then termed themselves, insisted on voting for Senator Clapp. To intensify the Republican dissensions, the action of President Taft in calling an extraordinary session for the consideration of the Canadian Reciprocity bill was as gall and wormwood to the extreme exponents of a high protective tariff. The Republicans were surly, and hopeless, disorganized, distrustful, demoralized.
And into this new senate the elections of 1910 had injected new blood. Aldrich, for a generation the potential leader of triumphant reactionary principles, no longer answered to the roll call. Hale of Maine, the first lieutenant of Aldrich, had retired. So too had Burrows of Michigan, one of the little coterie that arbitrarily determined the course of legislation in “the good old days.” On the Democratic side of the chamber were many new faces, some young, some old, but all fresh from the people and militantly progressive in their tendencies—their faces to the east. From Maine the virile, forceful Johnson—the first Democrat in generations; from Missouri the eloquent, picturesque militant, James A. Reed, destined to claim and compel a hearing from the start; from Ohio, in the seat of the reactionary Foraker, Atlee Pomerene, a thinker and fighter with faith and vision; from Nebraska the brilliant and aggressive journalist, Gilbert Hitchcock; from New York James A. O’Gorman, than whom no stronger character has ever represented the Empire state, independent in thought and action; from Tennessee the youthful Luke Lea—“Young Thunderbolt,” they called him, because of his pugnacity in battling for whatever he considered right; from New Jersey, fresh from his triumph over Smith, the former senator who had helped to scuttle the Democratic ship in the emasculation of the Wilson bill seventeen years before; from Montana, Henry L. Myers, the soul of sincerity and political honor; from West Virginia, William E. Chilton, and from Mississippi the brilliant John Sharpe Williams. Thus of the thirty-nine Democratic senators ten were new men and every one progressive in his tendencies and determined upon an aggressive party policy.
In the days immediately preceding the opening of the session the new Democratic senators, fresh from the people, held numerous conferences, and into these conferences other senators holding similar views, such as Shively of Indiana and Stone of Missouri, were drawn. There was much to consult about. The rank and file of the party throughout the country had not been satisfied with the character of the Democratic opposition to the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill, which had been secondary to that of the Republican rebels. During the long years of Democratic defeat there had developed among the Democratic gray beards of the senate an exotic known as the “White House” senator—the man whose party militancy had been softened into mushiness through the influence of social and patronage favors. There were others thought to be on too intimate terms with the Republican oligarchy dominated by Aldrich. Flowers over the garden wall had become too common. In brief the masses of the Democratic party were demanding a far more aggressive and uncompromising party policy than had been in evidence in a number of years. And practically all of the new senators, fresh from the people, shared heartily in these views.
But the method of impressing their views upon the Democratic membership of the senate presented a problem. Under the antiquated rules and practices, sustained by the pernicious rule of seniority, which held that new senators should be seen and not heard for an indefinite period, the old regime would arbitrarily determine committee assignments and, largely, caucus action. And they were practical politicians—these new men. They were not in the least awed by the atmosphere of the capitol. And they understood perfectly that if they were to get a “place in the sun” for the policies they stood for they would have to fight for it. This they determined to do.
From the beginning these new men gathered around Senator Kern, who was not only the oldest man among them, but the best known nationally. Day by day groups gathered in his offices, and without in any sense claiming it he found himself in the position of counselor of the militant progressives—the exponents of the new deal. His forty years of active participation in the hard-fought political battles of the doubtful state of Indiana gave assurance of a safe leadership; and his very name was a symbol of the policy these new men proclaimed.
The fight came in the election of the caucus leader, whose power to name the committee on committees made him in a large sense the determining factor in deciding the general tone of the Democratic side of the senate. Senator Martin of Virginia, who had been the leader and expected to retain the leadership, was generally looked upon as an ultra conservative, and at that very hour a fight was being made against him along progressive lines in the Old Dominion. A man of pleasing personality and unfailing courtesy, the decision to contest his re-election was not predicated upon personal dislike, but upon the fact that he at the time symbolized the old regime, which the new men proposed to pull down. For this purpose Senator Kern presented to the caucus, in opposition, the name of Senator Shively. The vote was a revelation to the “gray beards.” Notwithstanding the vigorous fight made in behalf of the Virginia senator, the peculiar sense of senatorial courtesy, the personal pleas that his defeat would be used unfairly against him in his fight in the primaries of the state, the accessions to the new senators from the old were so numerous that Martin’s majority was not at all gratifying.