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.