“And so his social life was really a busy and a cheering life, and while in no sense a society man, socially he was the noble Roman par excellent.”
VII
No one is so well qualified to tell the story of John Kern, the campaigner and man, as members of the newspaper fraternity who were assigned to “cover” him on many a tour, and called regularly at his office for many years. There was something in the temperament of the average newspaper man that appealed to him, and for practically all the reporters and correspondents who came into contact with him he formed personal friendship that was very real. This feeling was almost invariably reciprocated. The fact that many of these represented politically hostile papers made no difference with him. He was broad enough to understand.
Among the gentlemen of the press peculiarly qualified to speak, not only because of extensive experience with him, but because of the personal friendship that existed between him and them, are Louis Ludlow, the Washington correspondent, for many
years representative of The Indianapolis Sentinel and The Indianapolis Star; W. H. Blodgett, the veteran political writer of The Indianapolis News, and Kin Hubbard, the cartoonist and creator of “Abe Martin,” who frequently accompanied Kern upon his tours sketching the crowds, and whose work was a delight to the senator. These men knew the Kern of the campaign more intimately than the politicians for he unburdened himself to them with greater freedom and his confidence was never betrayed.
VIII
Among the press correspondents with whom Senator Kern was associated for many years none were more intimately identified with him than Louis Ludlow, the Washington correspondent, for many years the representative at the national capitol of The Indianapolis Sentinel and The Indianapolis Star. I am indebted to Mr. Ludlow for the following reminiscences:
“The writer of this article campaigned with John W. Kern for five weeks in 1910 when he was contesting with Mr. Beveridge for the senatorial toga. We shared together the exhilarating novelties and disappointing hardships, the bitter and the sweet, of that five weeks’ strenuous tour. We rode together in the same rickety day-coaches and stuffy interurban cars, bunked at the same hotel and rooming houses, participated in the same miseries and inconvenience of travel inflicted upon us by a campaign schedule that knew neither rhyme or reason, and whatever social recognitions came his way he very considerately insisted that I should share. He treated me in every respect as a comrade, although the paper I was writing for at the time was politically hostile to him and was giving him an editorial wallop every day.
“This was the longest period of intensive campaigning I ever had with Mr. Kern, and it gave me a clearer insight into his human trait and interesting mental processes, as well as his breadth of vision and nobility of character, than I ever had before; but compared with my long association with him, he as a leader of his party in state and nation and I as a newspaper writer, this five weeks’ tour was but a brief span. I had long before and on many occasions campaigned with Mr. Kern up and down Indiana, criss-cross and in every other way, and his office in the Stevenson, afterward the State Life building, was one of the stations on my daily beat at Indianapolis. I would no more have thought of letting a day pass without calling on Mr. Kern at least once than I would of going without my breakfast. In fact, as a zealous news gatherer I thought infinitely more of having my daily (often twice-daily) talk with Mr. Kern than of any mere culinary diversion.