“My fellow Democrats, you will not promote harmony, you will not point the way to victory, by jeering or deriding the name of the man who led your fortunes in 1908. You may put him to the wheel, you may humiliate him here, but in so doing you will bring pain to the hearts of six million men in America who would gladly die for him. You may kill him, but you do not commit homicide when you kill him; you commit suicide.
“My friends, I have submitted a proposition to Judge Parker; I submit it to the man, the leader of the New York Democracy who holds that Democracy in the hollow of his hand. What response have I? (A pause.) If there is to be no response, then let the responsibility rest where it belongs. If Alton B. Parker will come here now and join me in this request for harmony, his will be the most honored of all the names amongst American Democrats.
“If there is to be no response, if the responsibility is to rest there, if this is to be a contest between the people and the powers, if it is to be a contest such as has been described, a contest which I pray God may be averted, then the cause to which I belong is so great a cause that I am not fit to be its leader. If my proposition for harmony is to be ignored, and this deplorable battle is to go on, there is only one man fit to lead the hosts of progress, and that is the man who has been at the forefront for sixteen years, the great American tribune, William Jennings Bryan. If you will have nothing else, if that must be the issue, then the leader must be worthy of the cause, and that leader must be William Jennings Bryan.”
As Kern concluded, weak from a sleepless night and an enervating ailment, a friend took him by the arm and led him, “ashen hued and sick,” as the press reports described his appearance, from the stage. He passed within arm’s reach of Bryan, but not a word was exchanged between the two, nor even a look. The move Kern made was as much of a surprise to Bryan as to Parker. It was not a prearranged affair. There was no sharp practice in it. But it was an earnest effort of a loyal Democrat to pour oil upon the troubled waters and prevent a battle between members of the same army. As he spoke the expression on Bryan’s face clearly denoted his surprise. As he proceeded the expression of surprised anxiety gradually gave way to one of satisfaction and then to frank admiration. And when he was led from the stage, the Commoner in a dramatic manner accepted the commission which had been handed back to him. Had Bryan been a candidate originally the progressives of the country would not have had the warning of the reactionary plot. Had Kern remained silent and permitted the convention to vote between himself and Judge Parker without first submitting his series of compromise proposals, any of which should have been acceptable, the country might not have understood that there was a “rule or ruin” policy behind the men who presented Parker’s name. Thus Kern’s speech was quite as effective and important as that of Bryan.
Still it was not Senator Kern’s purpose to embarrass Judge Parker, in whose personal devotion to the party he had the most perfect confidence. He did entertain the hope that the New York jurist would meet him on the ground of a general conciliation. But when it became apparent that Parker was so situated that he could not respond to what must have been his natural impulse, and Kern made his appeal to Charles F. Murphy it was not so much with the thought that he might accept as with the intention to placing the responsibility and giving it “a local habitation and a name.”
Among Kern’s enemies there was a disposition to disseminate the idea that his action had compromised his personal popularity. Nothing could have been farther from the fact. The United Press on the following day properly gauged the effect when it said that “Kern’s efforts to obtain harmony in his personal appeal to Parker to withdraw in the interest of the party has added to his popularity among the men who championed Parker’s cause.”
That night he saw Bryan for the first time after the late parting of the night before. Accompanied by Mrs. Kern he called at Bryan’s rooms, where he found the Commoner in the center of his reception room surrounded by a crowd. Catching sight of the senator, Bryan broke through the crowd, his face wreathed in the Bryanic smile, and placing his arm affectionately about Kern’s shoulders, he said delightedly:
“How did you ever come to think of it? That was the smartest thing you ever did.”
Mr. Bryan publicly expressed his view of the performance in his newspaper article of the next morning:
“I think the reader, when he has fully digested this scheme (Kern’s) will admit that it is about as good an illustration as has been seen in many a day of the manner in which tact and patriotism can be combined. After I had put Senator Kern in nomination against Parker, he took the platform and made a most forcible and eloquent plea for harmony in the convention. He called attention to the great issues involved and to the importance of presenting a united front. He then presented a list of names.... He called upon Parker, who sat just in front of him, to join him in withdrawing in favor of any one of these men in order that the convention might operate without discord. It was a dramatic moment. Such an opportunity seldom comes to a man. If Parker had accepted it it would have made him the hero of the convention. There was a stir in his neighborhood in a moment. The bosses flocked about him, and the convention looked on in breathless anxiety, but he did not withdraw. The opportunity passed unimproved. Senator Kern then appealed to Mr. Murphy to induce Judge Parker to withdraw, but Mr. Murphy was not in a compromising mood. This was the only thing that Senator Kern did, the good faith of which could be questioned. I am afraid that he had no great expectation of melting the stony heart of the Tammany boss. At any rate nothing came of the generous offer made by Mr. Kern except that it shifted to the shoulders of Judge Parker and his supporters entire responsibility for any discord that might grow out of the contest.”