Chapter XI: Kern’s First Congress

I

Senator Kern entered the senate at a time when the dawn for the Democracy was breaking in the east; the long night of wandering in the wilderness was over and the day had come. In the opposite end of the capitol, the Democrats, with a triumphant majority, had made possible the election to the speakership of Champ Clark, one of the most uncompromising of Democrats and one of the most picturesque floor leaders that any party had ever had in the house. The Payne-Aldrich tariff bill had wrought such havoc that many of the old familiar figures of the congress had been swept into private life by the flood of popular indignation. The bitter fight that had been made by the Republican rebels in the senate against the iniquities of the tariff measure had left a once militant party in a state of demoralization, born of mutual distrust a desire for vengeance. There were no longer two parties in the senate--there were three, and the two of these counted as Republican were more bitter against each other than against the common enemy across the aisle. This was to be impressively disclosed early in the session, when the death of the venerable Fry of Maine necessitated the election of a president pro tempore and the Republicans with their numerical advantage were unable to muster a majority for Senator Gallenger, the caucus nominee, because the progressives, as they then termed themselves, insisted on voting for Senator Clapp. To intensify the Republican dissensions, the action of President Taft in calling an extraordinary session for the consideration of the Canadian Reciprocity bill was as gall and wormwood to the extreme exponents of a high protective tariff. The Republicans were surly, and hopeless, disorganized, distrustful, demoralized.

And into this new senate the elections of 1910 had injected new blood. Aldrich, for a generation the potential leader of triumphant reactionary principles, no longer answered to the roll call. Hale of Maine, the first lieutenant of Aldrich, had retired. So too had Burrows of Michigan, one of the little coterie that arbitrarily determined the course of legislation in “the good old days.” On the Democratic side of the chamber were many new faces, some young, some old, but all fresh from the people and militantly progressive in their tendencies--their faces to the east. From Maine the virile, forceful Johnson--the first Democrat in generations; from Missouri the eloquent, picturesque militant, James A. Reed, destined to claim and compel a hearing from the start; from Ohio, in the seat of the reactionary Foraker, Atlee Pomerene, a thinker and fighter with faith and vision; from Nebraska the brilliant and aggressive journalist, Gilbert Hitchcock; from New York James A. O’Gorman, than whom no stronger character has ever represented the Empire state, independent in thought and action; from Tennessee the youthful Luke Lea--“Young Thunderbolt,” they called him, because of his pugnacity in battling for whatever he considered right; from New Jersey, fresh from his triumph over Smith, the former senator who had helped to scuttle the Democratic ship in the emasculation of the Wilson bill seventeen years before; from Montana, Henry L. Myers, the soul of sincerity and political honor; from West Virginia, William E. Chilton, and from Mississippi the brilliant John Sharpe Williams. Thus of the thirty-nine Democratic senators ten were new men and every one progressive in his tendencies and determined upon an aggressive party policy.

In the days immediately preceding the opening of the session the new Democratic senators, fresh from the people, held numerous conferences, and into these conferences other senators holding similar views, such as Shively of Indiana and Stone of Missouri, were drawn. There was much to consult about. The rank and file of the party throughout the country had not been satisfied with the character of the Democratic opposition to the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill, which had been secondary to that of the Republican rebels. During the long years of Democratic defeat there had developed among the Democratic gray beards of the senate an exotic known as the “White House” senator--the man whose party militancy had been softened into mushiness through the influence of social and patronage favors. There were others thought to be on too intimate terms with the Republican oligarchy dominated by Aldrich. Flowers over the garden wall had become too common. In brief the masses of the Democratic party were demanding a far more aggressive and uncompromising party policy than had been in evidence in a number of years. And practically all of the new senators, fresh from the people, shared heartily in these views.

But the method of impressing their views upon the Democratic membership of the senate presented a problem. Under the antiquated rules and practices, sustained by the pernicious rule of seniority, which held that new senators should be seen and not heard for an indefinite period, the old regime would arbitrarily determine committee assignments and, largely, caucus action. And they were practical politicians--these new men. They were not in the least awed by the atmosphere of the capitol. And they understood perfectly that if they were to get a “place in the sun” for the policies they stood for they would have to fight for it. This they determined to do.

From the beginning these new men gathered around Senator Kern, who was not only the oldest man among them, but the best known nationally. Day by day groups gathered in his offices, and without in any sense claiming it he found himself in the position of counselor of the militant progressives--the exponents of the new deal. His forty years of active participation in the hard-fought political battles of the doubtful state of Indiana gave assurance of a safe leadership; and his very name was a symbol of the policy these new men proclaimed.

The fight came in the election of the caucus leader, whose power to name the committee on committees made him in a large sense the determining factor in deciding the general tone of the Democratic side of the senate. Senator Martin of Virginia, who had been the leader and expected to retain the leadership, was generally looked upon as an ultra conservative, and at that very hour a fight was being made against him along progressive lines in the Old Dominion. A man of pleasing personality and unfailing courtesy, the decision to contest his re-election was not predicated upon personal dislike, but upon the fact that he at the time symbolized the old regime, which the new men proposed to pull down. For this purpose Senator Kern presented to the caucus, in opposition, the name of Senator Shively. The vote was a revelation to the “gray beards.” Notwithstanding the vigorous fight made in behalf of the Virginia senator, the peculiar sense of senatorial courtesy, the personal pleas that his defeat would be used unfairly against him in his fight in the primaries of the state, the accessions to the new senators from the old were so numerous that Martin’s majority was not at all gratifying.

This marked the beginning of the general reorganization of the Democrats of the senate. The representatives of the old regime readily recognized the necessity of making concessions, and in the selection of the steering committee, or committee on committees, the new senator from Indiana was included. This within itself was a distinction seldom, until then, accorded a new member.

It was in connection with his work on this committee that Senator Kern met the greatest embarrassment of his senatorial career, resulting in some unjust criticism on the part of his political enemies in Indiana. The determination of the personnel of the important Finance committee, it was his desire that his colleague, Senator Shively, should have a place on this committee. Not only did the senior senator desire the assignment, but he was peculiarly fitted for it by a lifetime of study of fiscal legislation. No man connected with the public life of Indiana for a generation had possessed such a mastery of the intricacies of tariff legislation. He had unhappily been deprived of the opportunity of participating actively in the discussions of the Payne-Aldrich bill by the physical breakdown which had followed almost immediately his entrance to the senate, and he had felt it keenly. But his special qualifications for service on this committee were well known by all his colleagues, and he had the further qualification of having served on the Ways and Means committee of the house. For some reason a stubborn opposition to the appointment of Senator Shively developed, and to make the situation more embarrassing it was proposed by Senator Kern’s colleagues on the committee that he should accept a place on the Finance committee. In the meanwhile some senators, understanding Kern’s position, called upon Shively with a frank statement of the situation, with the view to getting his indorsement of Kern’s acceptance, but the senior senator, not unnaturally miffed by the attitude of the steering committee, maintained silence. At this the senators who made the attempt returned to the meeting of the committee, and, in the absence of Kern, and knowing his position, placed him upon the Finance committee. These facts are set forth because of the disposition of Senator Kern’s enemies to create the impression that he had used his position on the steering committee to further his own interests at the expense of his colleague. Of interest in this connection is the fact that two years later when elected to the leadership of the senate and the chairmanship of the steering committee he voluntarily retired from the Finance committee in favor of his colleague, while permitting him to retain the equally important assignment as ranking member of the committee on Foreign Relations. Notwithstanding the persistent efforts of petty busy-bodies in Indiana to alienate the two senators, their relations warmed with their years of association in the senate and were never closer than when, on the solicitation of the dying Shively, Senator Kern called at the White House to urge the appointment as ambassador to Chili of Joseph H. Shea, who had managed Shively’s campaign for the senate against Kern in the legislature of 1909.

Thus within a month after taking the oath as a senator Kern found himself in the enviable position of holding places on the Steering and Finance committees--a most unusual experience for a new senator. Among his other assignments was to the committee on Privileges and Elections, with which he was most intimately identified through his career in the senate. Before most new senators could be expected to learn their way about the capitol Kern was numbered among the leaders.

II

Senator Kern had scarcely warmed his seat in the senate before he found himself, together with seven other members of the committee on Privileges and Elections, engaged in the herculean task of investigating the charges of corruption in connection with the election of Senator Lorimer of Illinois. This required many months of ceaseless toil, and the case itself is one of the most fascinating and important in American history. Because of the enormous importance of the case and the fact that Senator Kern was forced by circumstances into the position of leadership of the forces persuaded of Lorimer’s guilt I shall touch upon this phase of his career in a separate chapter. During the period of the investigation he was necessarily withdrawn from active participation in other work of the senate, and while a member of the Finance committee in charge of the Canadian Reciprocity bill, to pass which congress had been called in extraordinary session, he was unable to participate in the hearings of the committee or the discussions on the floor to the extent that he otherwise would. During the interval, however, between the beginning of the Lorimer investigation and the final debate upon the reports of the committee he assumed a task that was very near to his heart in the championship of the Sherwood Dollar-a-Day pension bill in the senate, in the course of which he delivered the speech which attracted more general comment from the civil war veterans throughout the country than any other public utterance in forty years.

The Democratic state convention in which he was nominated for the senate had declared in favor of the immediate passage of a bill of this character, and during his campaign he had taken pains to especially indorse this plank and pledge himself to do all within his power to secure the enactment of such a law.

The election which sent Senator Kern to the senate restored the house of representatives to the Democrats for the first time in sixteen years, and General Sherwood, one of the most gallant soldiers of the civil war, who was made chairman of the Pension committee, undertook the formulation of a measure incorporating the dollar-a-day feature. This picturesque old warrier, almost eighty years of age, but as peppery in his advocacy of whatever he believed in as in the days of his youth, lived at the Congress Hall Hotel, where he came into intimate relations with Senator Kern, who undertook the leadership of the fight for the Sherwood bill after it reached the senate.

The senate, however, was still Republican, and when the house bill reached the senate it was promptly side-tracked for a less liberal measure prepared by Senator McCumber, chairman of the Pension committee of the upper chamber. When the Sherwood bill provided for a straight dollar-a-day for all the remaining veterans of the civil war, the McCumber measure was based upon a scale determined by age and length of service, but providing for a dollar a day for all totally incapacitated for manual labor through disease or wounds of service origin. It was wholly unsatisfactory to the soldiers, but met the approval of the politicians and the pure patriots of the parlor and the library and editorial sanctums. And it was understood to have the approval of the president. There was not the slightest possibility for the passage of any other bill.

This, however, did not deter Senator Kern from making a spirited plea for the more liberal measure from the house. It was his first set speech in the senate, and while comparatively short was prepared with considerable care--written with a pencil upon a pad in his beautiful chirography. During the delivery of the speech that afternoon, March 16, 1912, General Sherwood sat a few seats distant, his trumpet to his ear, nodding vigorous assent, and he was given close attention by his colleagues, but there was nothing in its reception in the senate chamber to suggest the really remarkable effect it had upon the soldiers from Massachusetts to California. The press associations carried but a meager part of the speech, but it was enough to strike a responsive chord in the men most vitally affected. The day following its delivery hundreds of letters expressive of gratitude poured in upon the senator from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and West Virginia; the next day brought hundreds from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky; and so on until the sixth day, when they arrived as numerously from Oregon and California. No speech on the pension question had attracted such widespread attention in more than a generation. Resolutions from hundreds of Grand Army posts soon followed; and then, with the publication, and distribution by request of the speech, letters from scores of posts telling of meetings devoted to the reading of the speech for the benefit of those too old to read. This speech is treasured, no doubt, to-day by thousands of these old men all over the country.

III

The extraordinary session called in April, 1911, by President Taft in the hope and expectation of the early passage of the Canadian Reciprocity bill dragged dismally through the terrific heat of that summer and did not conclude until in the last week in August. The hearings by the Finance committee were unnecessarily prolonged, and largely through the insistence of leading members of the president’s own party, who feared the possible effect of the slightest breach in the protection walls. Never, unless during the period that the Payne-Aldrich bill was in process of incubation, had the capital been so overrun with the professional lobbyists of the interests, posing as representatives of the farmers, while lolling in evening dress at night in Peacock Alley at the Willard. Senator Kern, when not engaged with the Lorimer investigation, occupied his seat at the table, and he was in hearty sympathy with the principle involved and with the patriotic purpose of President Taft, for whom he entertained a personal affection. For the purpose of convenience I shall here disregard the chronological order of events, and complete the story of his work during the 62nd congress with the exception of his most important work on the Lorimer committee, which requires a separate chapter. In doing so I shall merely touch upon incidents reflecting his views on public questions of vital interests.

In the winter of 1911-12 his position relative to the legitimate interest of the nation in labor difficulties directly affecting single states, foreshadowing the fight he was destined to make on behalf of the coal miners of West Virginia, was disclosed in the discussion of a resolution directing or requesting the Commissioner of Labor to furnish full information to the senate regarding the condition of the textile mill workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts. A strike had been on for some time, and in addition to the most startling disclosures, through the press, of the wages, ages and living conditions of the workers, it was charged that the local authorities of Lawrence had forcibly prevented the wives of the strikers from sending their children into other states where provision had been made for their proper feeding during the continuance of the strike. An opposition to the resolution had developed in the senate under the guise of a protest against any intended federal interference with the rights of the states, very similar to that which was to be invoked in the case of West Virginia, and led by the same man, Senator Bacon of Georgia. Senator Kern participated in the debate on behalf of the resolution. This was not to be his last manifestation of impatience with the disposition to invoke the “rights” and the “dignity” of states for the prevention of federal interference with barbarous conditions affecting the lowly. The resolution was ultimately adopted in amended form, but in the meanwhile the house of representatives had entered into a thorough investigation which exposed conditions so inhuman as to shock the country.

And as the Lawrence resolution foreshadowed his views on West Virginia, the views he was to express in the Lorimer report were indicated in advance in the debate on the report of the senatorial committee, which had investigated the charge that Senator Stephenson of Wisconsin had attained his seat through the wholesale corruption of voters in a primary. The accused senator, a millionaire, with no pretense to statesmanship or high political capacity, and representing the opposition to Lafollette, had admittedly turned over to his political managers extraordinary sums of money. It was his contention that this had been intended for proper purposes, the renting of halls, advertising, and the payment of the traveling expenses of speakers. It was developed that this money had undoubtedly been used for corruption purposes, but there was considerable sympathy for Stephenson, whose term was drawing to a close and who was very old and feeble. “Why disgrace him on the brink of the grave?” was the plea of his supporters. And the little frail figure with the scraggly beard and sad old eyes looking into space, while the jaws worked ceaselessly in the chewing of gum, did appeal to one’s sense of the pathetic. Senator Kern admitted to a feeling of compassion for the old man whose sins had found him out, but he was unwilling to compromise a principle on that account. There were features to the Stephenson case that appealed to him as infinitely more dangerous than any developed in the case of Lorimer, for they went directly to the debauching of the electorate. During his participation in the discussion Kern scornfully assailed two sophistries dear to the corruptionist and urged in defense of the accused--the idea that the payment of money to men “to work” for a candidate is anything other than the bribing of the man, and the suggestion that the payment of money to an editor for editorial commendation of a candidate is anything other than a bribe of the most sinister nature. These two evils--the debauching of the voter and the subsidization of the press he looked upon as the gravest danger possible to free institutions. Hating the use of money for the control of elections with all his soul, he unhesitatingly put aside his personal sympathy for a very old man, and joined the minority in voting for his expulsion from the senate, to which he ought never have been admitted.

That he was not actuated in matters of this nature by the motives of a demagogue was shown in his attitude in the vote on the impeachment of Judge Archibald, a United States circuit judge of Scranton, Pennsylvania, accused of having made corrupt use of his office. The vote was taken early in January, 1913. In the early fall of 1912 Senator Kern had entered upon the defense of the officers of the Structural Iron Workers in the federal court in Indianapolis on the supposition that the case would be concluded long before congress would convene in December. The trial dragged along through many weeks and unable and unwilling to desert his clients in the midst of their trial he was unable to return to Washington until after the Christmas holidays. Not having had the opportunity to see and hear the witnesses he asked the senate to excuse him from voting, and his request was granted. This was characteristic. The cause of Judge Archibald was an exceedingly unpopular one, and had he been an ordinary poseur in his hatred of corruption in high places he could have voted in accord with what he knew public opinion to be. But a poseur he was not--and he always catered to the commendation of his own conscience.

In less than fifteen months after entering the senate he had taken a position by common consent among the Democratic leaders of that body, and had established a national reputation as an enemy of political corruption, as a friend of the civil war veteran, and as the special champion in the senate of the working classes of the country.