The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

And the miners knew, what was of more vital importance to them, that none of their men would serve twenty years in the penitentiary at the behest of a military despotism, and Mother Jones declared that “Senator Kern threw open the prison doors for me.”

The militant courage of Kern held high the torch that illuminated the darkness of the darkest spot, industrially on American soil, and it will never be so dark again. His action made him powerful foes, even in his own state. But it won him something that he cherished—the undying gratitude of the workers who go down into the earth for the fuel that warms mankind.

CHAPTER XVI
Senatorial Battles for Social Justice

I

SENATOR Kern carried into the senate the keen sense of social justice, and the sympathy for the lowly which had characterized him through life, and during his term in the senate there was no controversy involving the rights or interests of the working classes in which he did not take an active interest. While no service he rendered to the workers required the courage called for in the battle against feudalism in the Paint Creek settlement of West Virginia, this was by no means an isolated instance of devotion to their cause. Nor was this in any sense a pose for political effect. He had an inherent hatred of oppression of the weak on the part of the powerful, and was temperamentally incapable of understanding the indifference of others. When during the pendency of the anti-trust bill letters poured in upon him urging that trade unions be placed in the same category with trusts, formed for the purpose of arbitrarily fixing prices and exploiting the consumers, he made no attempt to conceal his disgust. The insistence of some law-makers that the rights of man should be weighed in the same scale with the privileges of property, translated in the vocabulary of some into “rights,” aroused his wrath.

In the mid-summer of 1914 an incident occurred in the senate during the consideration of the sundry civil appropriation bill which, more than any other one thing perhaps revealed Senator Kern’s attitude toward the social and economic problems of the country. Some time before, the congress had created an Industrial Relations Commission and President Wilson had appointed as its chairman Frank P. Walsh of Kansas City, a lawyer of unusual ability who thought in terms of humanity—the ideal man for the position. This was one of the commissions that could be made worthless or worth while, according to the disposition of its membership, and the president had appointed a chairman who made everything worth while that he touched. He accepted his duties seriously and set to work in the most thorough and exhaustive fashion to probe to the bottom of the social and industrial problems of America. Within a few months he had accomplished enough to attract the attention of thinkers, social workers and economists to his work. The conditions he disclosed were in some instances startling. Senator Kern, who had sympathized with the purpose of the commission, read in manuscript the evidence taken by the commission at Philadelphia and was delighted with the spirit with which it approached its task, and impressed with the enormous possibilities for good from such an expose of evils.

He had enough faith in human nature to feel assured that ameliatory legislation would always follow the realization of its necessity as a result of the pressure of public opinion. He felt that many of the social and economic wrongs are permitted to exist merely because the public knows little about them, or knows them only as isolated cases of viciousness or injustice. He knew that the elements or interests that are the beneficiaries of such wrongs are vitally concerned in their concealment. And Mr. Walsh was seriously interfering with their peace of mind. The press was beginning to give considerable publicity to his work. The working class was intensely interested. Even the colleges were taking notice.

The result was the beginning of a propaganda to discredit the work of the commission, by picturing Walsh as a dangerous visionary, more or less socialistic, whose work was merely calculated to create bad blood between the employers and the employees. One feature of the propaganda was to create the impression that the commission was accomplishing nothing worth while and that public money was being squandered uselessly. “Why should such a commission be continued, anyway?”

When the sundry civil appropriation bill was under consideration by the senate July 7, 1914, Senator Borah of Idaho, whose views on social justice closely resembled those of Senator Kern, called attention to the action of the Appropriations committee in cutting the appropriation for the commission from $200,000 to a paltry $50,000, which was equivalent to blotting it out entirely. With the appropriation previously made it had been utterly impossible to print the evidence taken at the various hearings. The reduction of the appropriation as proposed would have had the effect of destroying the commission utterly. If such was not the intention of the committee it was the desire of some members of the senate who feared the effect of the expose of the conditions of child labor and in the sweat shops and death traps where women are worked for a miserable pittance under conditions of sanitation disgraceful to the age.

In explaining the action of the committee Senator Martin of Virginia said that it was of the opinion that “no good was being derived correspondingly to that appropriation,” and expressed his personal doubt as to the work of the commission being “advantageous to the public.” Asked by Senator Borah whether the commission had been consulted as to the reasons for the larger appropriation, Senator Martin replied that it had not.