The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

The National Committee had entrusted a sub-committee of eight to select the temporary chairman and this committee first proffered the position to Mr. Bryan, who declined, and then to Senator Kern, who refused to serve. It was the suggestion of both Mr. Bryan and Senator Kern that a thoroughly progressive Democrat, nationally known as such, should be chosen. The forces of Champ Clark had a candidate who measured up to the desired standard in Ollie James of Kentucky, then a member of the house, and the Wilson forces favored the election of Robert L. Henry, a representative from Texas, who also harmonized with Mr. Bryan’s idea of a temporary chairman. When the sub-committee met eight of the sixteen voted for Parker, three for James, three for Henry, one for Kern and one for O’Gorman. The one vote cast for Senator Kern was not the vote of the Indiana member, Mr. Taggart. The Indiana member did not vote for Kern because the senator had written him personally that he did not desire the position.

With this vote the fight passed to the full membership of the National Committee, and Bryan with a vigorous pen began a determined warfare through the press against the choice of the sub-committee. Realizing the importance of the issue, the Wilson followers, in view of Mr. Wilson’s telegram to Bryan accepting the latter’s view of the selection of Parker, withdrew the candidacy of Henry and went over to James. On the afternoon of the day before the full committee met in the evening, Bryan declared through the press that in the event the organization recommended Parker he would oppose him on the floor of the convention with another candidate. The issue was clean-cut. That night the full committee selected Parker by a vote of 32 to 20 for James and 2 for O’Gorman. The fight was on.

Mr. Bryan did not want to be the candidate against Parker. It was his plan to serve notice on the rank and file of the party throughout the country of the reactionary trend of the convention through a powerful speech he expected to make in presenting the name of his candidate. This he could not do were he himself the candidate. His first step was to ask Ollie James to permit the presentation of his name, but having been the avowed candidate before the committee of the Clark forces, the managers of the speaker of the house objected to James being a candidate. He then appealed to Senator O’Gorman, but found that he was pledged to Parker. Then it was he determined upon presenting the name of Senator Kern.

There were several reasons bearing on state politics which made the suggestion distasteful to Kern. He was interested in the nomination of Governor Marshall for the presidency, and the reasons which impelled the Clark forces to object to the candidacy of James made the idea unpleasant to the Indiana senator. All the various reasons were given Bryan in an effort to dissuade him from his plan to nominate Kern, but without effect. Meanwhile many of the senator’s friends became concerned over the proposal. While it did not operate in determining Kern’s state of mind, some of these friends, anticipating the long deadlock which occurred in the balloting for the presidency were convinced that should the convention be forced to go outside the list of avowed candidates no one would loom so promisingly as the Indiana senator, and they were anxious to prevent his prominence in connection with a fight. The strain told physically upon Kern. Many of his friends, and notably Senator Luke Lea of Tennessee, made frequent efforts to persuade the Nebraskan to nominate some other man. Mr. Kern himself had but little hope of their success. The night before the convention met while dining with Lea he made this clear. The Tennesseean made another trip to Bryan’s room and brought back the message that the latter had closed the subject with the remark, “I intend to nominate John to-morrow, and he will have to do what he thinks best about it.” It was after this that Kern himself made a last attempt. “He left my room,” writes Mr. Bryan to me, “late the night before the convention without a positive reply. He urged me to be a candidate, but did not decide the question whether he would accept. Next morning I heard a rumor that he might put me in nomination, but I had explained to him that I wanted to present to the convention the reasons why Parker should not be nominated and that I could only do that in a speech presenting the name of some one else. Not hearing directly from Kern, I presented his name and then he played his part, and it was a very skilful part.”

For the story of Senator Kern’s part between the time he left Mr. Bryan’s room late that night and the following morning I am indebted to Mrs. Kern, who was at the convention. He went directly to his own room and told Mrs. Kern everything that had transpired. He was so worried that he slept none that night, and his nervous condition brought on an illness that made sleep impossible. It was during that restless night that he planned his part on the morrow, and the first person to learn of his plans was Mrs. Kern, to whom he detailed his purpose early in the morning as he was sitting on the edge of his bed drawing on his shoes. With this exception he gave no indication of his intention. Contrary to the general assumption at the time that the scene in the convention that day had been planned by Mr. Bryan, the Commoner knew absolutely nothing about it until he witnessed it on the platform. “The plan was his own so far as I know,” Mr. Bryan tells me, “and no actor ever did his work more perfectly.”

Looking down from the gallery upon the convention that day one could easily imagine a storm-tossed sea. The excitement was intense. Great throngs futilely beat against the doors for admission. The day was intensely warm. The session was rich in the dramatic from the moment the venerable Cardinal Gibbons in his scarlet robes passed down the center aisle for the opening invocation until the result of the chairmanship fight was announced. The feeling on the part of Bryan’s enemies among the delegates had been intensified during the night, and there was some concern among the conservative and thoughtful lest the Commoner might be insulted so flagrantly as to result in a general resentment over the country.

When the familiar figure of the Commoner appeared in the convention he was given a remarkable ovation, and when a little later Senator Kern entered Bryan was given another demonstration. These exhibitions of devotion did not tend to sweeten the temper of his enemies, and when he appeared upon the platform to deliver his speech the hiss was not absent from the general turmoil. Seldom has the great orator appeared so majestic as he did in this fighting speech. There was something strangely hard, steel-like, in the man that those who had heard him frequently on less momentous occasions could not recognize. A more militant figure never faced a hostile crowd—and there were enough enemies in the convention to give it the appearance of hostility. Time and again he was compelled to pause by the hisses and imprecations, but he stood there immovable like a stonewall waiting for the storm to subside sufficiently for him to make his voice heard above the din. That speech made history—more so than the Cross of Gold speech in 1896. With the general purport of the speech we are not here concerned, for it is well known. But we are interested that in that portion of the speech having to do directly with Senator Kern. Here he said:

“It is only fair now that, when the hour of triumph has come, the song of victory should be sung by one whose heart has been in the fight. John W. Kern has been faithful every day during these sixteen years. It has cost him time, it has cost him money, and it has cost him the wear of body and of mind. He has been giving freely of all that he had. Four years ago, when the foundation was laid for the present victory, it was John W. Kern who stood with me and helped to bring into the campaign the idea of publicity before the election which has now swept the country until even the Republican party was compelled by public opinion to give it unanimous indorsement only a few weeks ago.

“It was John W. Kern who stood with me on that Denver platform that demanded the election of senators by a direct vote of the people, when a Republican national convention had turned it down by a vote of seven to one, and now he is in the United States senate, where he is measuring up to the high expectations of a great party.

“He helped in the fight for the amendment authorizing an income tax, and he has lived to see a president who was opposed to us take that plank out of our platform and put it through the house and senate and to see thirty-four states of the union ratify it. And now he is leading the fight in the United States senate to purge that body of Senator Lorimer, who typifies the supremacy of corruption in politics.