That, however, did not conclude the Democratization of the senate, for new rules were adopted which deprived chairmen of the arbitrary control over legislation which had been their portion during the long period of Aldrich-Hale rule. These rules provided that a majority of the committee might call the committee together at any time for the consideration of any pending bill; that a majority of the majority members might name sub-committees to consider pending measures and report to the full committee; and that a majority of the majority members might name members to confer with the house conferees on any bill on which the two houses might disagree. Strangely enough the adoption of these significant new rules which struck at the root of the evils of the old system failed to make much of an impression upon the press, which for the most part, passed them by without comment. The Review of Reviews, however, caught the significance and said that “even more significant than the personal changes which bring a new set of men into control of a body so recently managed by the extreme conservatives of both parties are the changes in the rules.”

The system thus displaced had long been recognized among progressives familiar with its mode of operation as sinister in the extreme. The chairman of a committee could indefinitely postpone action on any bill which did not appeal to him by refusing to call the committee together for its consideration.

If he did finally call the committee he had the autocratic power to name a sub-committee for its consideration packed with its enemies, who could be depended upon to bring in an unfavorable report. More sinister still, perhaps, was his power to select the conferees in the case of a disagreement between the two houses because the measure as passed by the senate could be radically altered in conference and completely changed from the form in which it left the senate and could only be rejected or accepted without amendment on its resubmission to the senate.

The new senate really deprived the chairman of a committee of any real power in excess of that of any of his colleagues on the committee and reduced him to the harmless status of a presiding officer.

Thus the election of Senator Kern to the leadership of the majority at the beginning of the first Wilson administration, with all that followed in keeping with the meaning of that selection, marked a revolutionary change in the United States senate, broke down the fetish of the seniority rule, smashed superannuated precedents and traditions, made difficult if not impossible the domination of the body by a small coterie of men entrenched in powerful chairmanships, and did more toward the democratization of the senate than had been done in half a century. And, what was more remarkable, it was all done with such tact and fairness that within a week the Democratic majority, small as it was, presented to the opposition a solid front prepared to make good the progressive pledges of the Baltimore platform and the pre-election speeches of President Wilson. How faithfully and effectively and unselfishly Senator Kern did his work during the four years of his leadership and especially during the first two years which were crowded as never before in history with vitally important constructive legislation will be discussed later in a single chapter.

CHAPTER XV
Kern’s Fight Against Feudalism in West Virginia

SCARCELY had Senator Kern assumed the leadership of the senate until he was engaged in the most notable and bitter battle of his career against the feudalism of the coal barons of West Virginia. His resolution for a senatorial investigation into the conditions in the Paint Creek district where anarchy was apparently in full flower, with the constitutional guaranties of citizens brushed aside, and men being tried for their lives by drumhead courtmartials while the civil courts were open, was the signal for the marshaling of an army of opposition embracing railroads, coal operators, bankers, all the powerful moneyed interests. Never before in history, in a distinct fight between the working classes on the one side and the great interests on the other, had the masses won in the senate. Never before had a senator just assuming leadership so audaciously challenged defeat. And he won.

But to appreciate the significance of his triumph it is necessary to record something of the ineffable inhumanity of the industrial feudalism which had been established through the employment of armies of gun-men, the subsidization of the press, the prostitution of the courts, the cringing sycophancy of politicians, and the organization of bi-partisan political machines to meet the demands of greed.

It must be a startling story—a story of greed fattening upon the hunger of children, of the trampling of inalienable rights, of the kicking to death of unborn babes by brutes untouched by the law, of the murder of women, and the shooting of unarmed men in the night—a story of tyranny and brutality as infamous and cruel as was ever born of the dynasty of the Romanoffs.

And this story, which shocked the most conservative members of the senate, and shamed a republic, must be told primarily because the American people have been told too little of it. And it must be told in the story of Kern as an illumination of his political character and as an explanation of the bitter hostility with which his course was viewed by such a large portion of “our best people” in his own state.