The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

I am indebted to Henry A. Barnhart for a picture of the Kern of Congress Hall:

“Socially speaking, Senator Kern gave little attention to society functions in the national capital and yet he was a social favorite. He rarely went out except on state occasions, when his leadership in the senate necessitated his presence to add dignity or importance to occasions; where the foremost of the nation’s official leaders assembled in social formality. Seldom, indeed, did he ever attend the theater, while golf, baseball and other like recreations, resorted to by many great men as relaxation for tired minds and bodies, had no attraction for him. Likewise he was not a churchgoer and yet he had a sacred and profound regard for the church and for sincere religious convictions. Although a constant reader, cheap fiction was not a pastime for him and in his reading, like his physical relaxations, he did everything to rest except rest. When he read he worked industriously at it and it was something worth while.

“The senator was socially at his best when in an environment of informality, and gained largest relief from fatigue or responsibilities when surrounded by a group of congenial friends at Congress Hall Hotel, where he lived during his official career in Washington. His hotel life was methodical. He went to bed at ten o’clock every night and was at the breakfast table at eight in the morning. After supper each evening (or dinner, as fashionable Washington calls it) he would retire to his room and recline in a comfortable chair and there for an hour, under canopy of smoke from a ‘home made’ cigar, he would read the evening papers. Then he would go down to the lobby of the hotel and there join the ‘statesman’s circle’ and lightly or seriously discuss the issues of the day, swap refreshing anecdotes of laughable incidents on the hustings, in the courts and in politics, and rarely failing to illustrate some feature of the conversation by recounting some misfortune or act of unsophistication of his boyhood career in a village neighborhood near his dear Kokomo, or of his struggles to gain a footing in law or politics. Not only did he love to indulge in personal reminiscences, but even more did he enjoy communing with memories of happy association with brilliant and picturesque men of other days in every county in Indiana. His fund of true-to-life stories was voluminous and ever delightful. He could not ‘hold a candle’ to Champ Clark in recital of rare and fascinating biography of great men, but in dramatic or quaint description of their striking or peculiar characteristics and in portrayal of the attributes which made them conspicuous as state or national figures he was a delight extraordinary.

“Also in friendly repartee and ready wit he was a great favorite. Speaking of his passive regard for the theater, the wife of a well-known Indiana congressman one evening approached her husband and the senator, as they were indulging in their daily visit, and inquired of the former if she should order tickets for an evening with the drama, then on at a Washington playhouse. When advised to do so she invited the senator to accompany them. ‘Is it a good laugh?’ he inquired. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but next week Montgomery and Ward (slip of the tongue for Montgomery and Stone) are to be here in the Red Mill and that will be a laugh for you.’ ‘Delightful,’ the senator replied, ‘when will Sears and Roebuck be here?’

“One evening the lone Socialist of the house was regaling a group, of which Senator Kern was one, with an impassioned screed against whatever was and reached a climax in the vociferous explosion, ‘My God, Senator, has reason been entirely dethroned?’ ‘I guess it has,’ was the senator’s meek and pacific reply.

“At another time the senator and one of his Democratic congressional associates had been out to address a mass meeting and the congressman spoke first and used almost an hour of the hour and a half allotted to the two. When they returned to the hotel several gentlemen who had accompanied them gathered about them and one said, ‘Congressman, better have a chair, you have made a very vigorous speech and are doubtless tired.’ ‘No, thank you,’ replied the congressman, ‘I do not care to sit down.’ ‘I noticed that when you were speaking,’ was Kern’s pat and mirth-provoking injection.

“Two middle-aged Indiana congressmen always occupied connecting bachelor apartments when their families were not with them, and one was telling the senator how the other seemed to be growing old and childish. ‘Why, he sleeps with his watch under his pillow,’ the solon said, ‘to help him wake up in the morning and when I go in and call to him and tell him it is time to look at his watch he rears up like a wild horse and acts like one.’ ‘Probably frightened, in his half-awake condition,’ said the senator, ‘with apprehension that you are some constituent about to ask him a direct question as to where he stands on free garden seed.’

“But the real milk of human kindness in Senator Kern’s life was not touchingly revealed in his tireless devotion to the needy—to the underdog in the struggle for existence—and his patience with these was none the less marked than with the most influential in the country. And therefore what little social life he enjoyed was constantly invaded by innumerable callers with a mission of self help, to be relieved by the senator, and he would leave the social circle, leave his dinner table, and leave the helpful comfort of his bed when in ill health to see them, not only once, but again and again.

“Indeed, none ever came to him for an audience and for hope in vain. Sometimes he would go to his room immediately after his supper and take one of his congenial friends with him to get much-needed freedom from official cares and to rest through an informal chat. Once on such occasion, the writer saw him take down the telephone receiver and leave it off the hook, explaining that he did it that the hotel telephone operator could not ring him a call down into the lobby to give audience to some one who wanted official assistance. The receiver had been off the hook but a short time when the senator put it back, saying, ‘Possibly some poor mortal might want to see me on a matter in which prompt action would mean happiness to him and delay would cause him despair, and I’d rather be harassed and nerveworn by ninety-nine undeserving than to disappoint one in actual need of help.’ So whether it was some dignified message bearer from the administration suggesting congressional action or some earnest representative of labor with a plea for legislative justice, or some agent of business interests about to be affected by revenue taxes, or some governmental clerk ‘in bad’ with his chief, or some Oliver Twist in politics shoving up his plate for more, or some poor old woman with no family and few friends begging that the wolf scratching at the door of her abode of squalor be driven away by official interference, all were alike patiently heard and so kindly treated that they went away with a lump of sugar in the mouth and a rising tide of hope eternal in the heart.

“Therefore Senator Kern’s social life while in congress consisted in evening indulgence in conversational round tables with friends, who talked both business and pleasure, frequently interrupted by requests of never-ending procession of favor hunters for official influence in their behalf. He disliked so-called caste and blue-blood breeding and society shams of whatsoever kind, preferring the companionship of men and women of strength of character which lifted them above the frivolous, the irresponsible and the pretentious.