THE LAST BATTLE
The campaign in Indiana in 1916 was a cross between a comedy and a
tragedy. A political battle had never before been so miserably
mismanaged in the history of the state accustomed for half a century to
fierce fights. By the middle of the summer the wiseacres of the east had
lightly eliminated the state from their calculations and had busied
themselves with plans for re-electing the president without the
electoral vote of Indiana. The leaders at national headquarters
predicated their pessimism concerning the state on the extensively
advertised strength of the Republican state organization, and the
unquestioned demoralization of the Democratic party in Marion county
(Indianapolis). In the summer of 1915 Senator Kern had shared in this
pessimism until he began his journeys out among the people throughout
the state, and it was the common observation of veteran campaigners of
conservative judgment that they had never in all their experience
encountered among Democrats such enthusiasm for the president, or found
among Republicans so many who were openly expressing their intention to
vote the Democratic ticket. Comparing the state of feeling among the
masses of the people with that prevalent during the campaign of 1904
preceding the overwhelming Republican landslide there was ample
justification for the feeling that the state was ripe for a landslide to
the Democrats. Where one Democrat declared his intention to vote for
Roosevelt in 1904 there were twenty Republicans who were making no
secret of their intention to vote for President Wilson in 1916. The
sentiment was strong--all it needed was crystallization, organization,
direction.
The state leaders, however, were discouraged from the beginning by the
attitude of the national organization and the fear of German-American
disaffection. The state organization was handicapped throughout by the
lack of sufficient funds for ordinary organization purposes--and no hope
of aid was held at any time by the national leaders. Throughout the
summer months while the Democrats were marking time the Republicans were
literally pouring money into Indiana, and this was being used with
deadly effect in the work of organization and propaganda. A number of
the wealthy Democrats of the state who had formerly contributed to the
campaign fund were not in sympathy with the progressive and ameliatory
policies of the Wilson administration. And the masses of the party were
poor. In Indianapolis there were not among merchants in the shopping
district half a dozen Democrats, and among the manufacturers an even
smaller number. It was manifestly impossible for the Democrats to cope
unaided with the wealthier Republicans of the state, energetically
backed by the Republican national organization. The result was that the
Democratic state organization was a shell. And the national organization
refusing to recognize the responsibility of its own neglect used the
inefficiency of the state organization as an excuse for turning its back
on Indiana and pouring three times as much money into Pennsylvania and
upper New York, where there was no possibility of winning, as would have
been necessary to have placed the electoral vote of Indiana in the
Democratic column.
But that was not the only blunder. Never in half a century have as few
orators of national repute appeared upon the stump for the Democracy in
the state of Hendricks, Voorhees and Kern. Mr. Bryan, who was probably
worth ten thousand votes, and who had been the strongest figure on the
stump in the state for twenty years, did not appear for a single speech.
Ollie James, another prime favorite, was permitted to enter Indiana for
two speeches. Two or three cabinet officers spoke once or twice. As far
as speakers from the outside was concerned there was little to indicate
to the casual observer that the old historic battle field was the scene
of another struggle. And all the while the Republicans were pouring
their most effective campaigners into the state. This was not
satisfactory to the Indiana leaders, who made their protests against the
neglect but without making the slightest impression.
To Senator Kern the most disheartening feature of the disposition to
keep the best campaigners out of Indiana was his inability to secure the
services of the more notable former leaders of the Progressive party,
who were supporting the Democracy elsewhere. Late in the summer he had
made an effort to impress upon Vance McCormick, the national chairman,
the vital necessity of thus making an appeal on the strength of the
progressive record of President Wilson to the erstwhile progressives. He
had shown him that the Democratic vote in Indiana in 1912, when the
state was carried by Wilson, was almost 100,000 short of the vote cast
for Bryan in 1908, thus indicating that the majority of these had gone
into the Progressive party. And he made it clear that the only hope of
winning was to get these back and that it could only be done by fighting
for them. At that time he exacted the promise that Francis J. Heney,
Bainbridge Colby and other progressive orators would be sent into the
progressive districts of the state, but the promise was not kept. To
make it worse they were dated, advertised, and then withdrawn at the
eleventh hour. Whatever may have been the reason the plain truth is that
had the national organization deliberately designed to turn Indiana
over to the Republicans, it could not have proceeded with more
effectiveness than it did.
To make matters all the worse the session of congress had been prolonged
into early September and the close found Senator Kern in a state of
physical exhaustion and under the necessity of taking a brief rest
before entering the campaign. He returned to Indiana after a short time
at Kerncliffe on the day that Charles E. Hughes spoke in Indianapolis.
At the hour the Republican presidential nominee was speaking in
Tomlinson Hall, Senator Kern sat before an open grate at his home and
discussed the possibilities of his last battle with the realization that
it would require his utmost exertions. He was not unmindful of the fact
that the opposition to his re-election was not to be confined to those
enlisted under the Republican banner, but that he was to face a special
fight upon himself. Among a certain class of politicians he had never
been popular, and some of these were openly going about abusing him and
talking combinations against him. The activities of these men were
regularly reported to him, but owing to their insignificance he attached
but little importance to their work. But there was another element of
opposition the strength of which he recognized. This was composed of the
so-called “respectable” men of the business world who distrusted him
because of his progressive, humanitarian views of social justice, and
hated him because of the fights he had made repeatedly for the working
classes. The organization exposed in its perfidy by the Mulhall
disclosures had its ramifications into Indianapolis especially, but
throughout the state as well. These men were bitter in their opposition.
While they were composed for the most part of Republicans, they had
their Democratic allies. It was a combination of a bi-partisan nature of
the representatives of the idea embodied in the association, created for
the purpose of destroying organized labor and influencing legislation by
the most sinister methods in favor of special privileges for the few and
against remedial legislation for the many. And these men who had
disliked him from the time he was in the state senate hated him all the
more because of his fight against Lorimer, which was a fight against
their system; for his fight against the tyranny of the coal barons of
West Virginia, in favor of the Child Labor bill, the Seamen’s bill, the
Eight-Hour Railroad bill. And all the venom thus engendered they poured
forth in denunciations of the senator for having dared appear as the
legal representative of the Structural Iron and Steel Workers when on
trial in the federal court. As Kern sat before the fire the night that
Hughes was speaking to a cold crowd down town, he was far from
underestimating the capacity of these men for harm. They had always been
his enemies--and he theirs. They hated his views on social justice and
he despised theirs. And he knew that they would leave no stone unturned
to encompass his defeat. With the heat of the blazing fireplace beating
upon his cheeks the semblance of the glow of health that night he seemed
fit for the fight. But it was an illusion of the flames. The next
morning it was all too apparent in his haggard features and distressing
cough that he was a sick man. And his failure to carry out the plans he
had been meditating a long time was due to his physical inability to
rise to the occasion.
Confronted by a powerful foe, aside from the Republican party
organization, he was compelled to enter the campaign without a personal
organization or the funds with which to create one. No politician in the
state had such a large personal following among the rank and file, but
this was an unorganized and undirected mass.
The one bright feature of his campaign was the quick and eager response
of organized labor--a response spontaneous, unsolicited. One afternoon
while in his office discussing with a prominent national leader of
organized labor the necessity of reaching the coal fields with the story
of his work on the West Virginia matter he had just expressed the hope
that Mother Jones might be induced to enter the state when the
telephone bell rang.
“This is Mother Jones,” said the voice at the other end, “may I see the
senator?”
And twenty minutes later the wonderful old woman walked into the room
with the announcement:
“When I was imprisoned, threatened with death, and needed a friend and
none seemed near you saved my life. Now you are in a fight and I came to
report. Send me where you will.”
It was in incidents like this that Kern found sufficient compensation
for all the abuse that was lavished upon him by men of the type of Kirby
of the Manufacturers’ Association.
At the state convention of the Federation of Labor this eighty-year-old
woman appeared unexpectedly, aroused the delegates to the highest pitch
of enthusiasm by her recital of Kern’s services to labor and herself,
and brought every delegate to his feet with the demand that all who
thought it the duty of union labor to fight for the senator’s
re-election stand up. And this scene was not according to the program
planned by a little coterie of enemies.
After this Mother Jones swept through the mining towns and camps of the
state, arousing enthusiasm for Kern everywhere she went, and fervently
urging her “boys” to put on the armor in his behalf. And that which she
did was done by other representatives of labor of less note.
It was the idea of local campaign managers in the various counties to
pack Senator Kern and Senator Taggart into automobiles and hurry them
from meeting to meeting for short speeches during the day, closing in at
night at the county seat with a great demonstration. The first week
disclosed the impossibility of the plan as far as Kern was concerned,
and very soon afterward Senator Taggart, a younger man, was forced to
notify the managers that he could not stand up under the strain.
Entering the campaign with a distressing cough, the first week increased
his affliction, and from that time on he was in a hopelessly crippled
condition. His physician urged him to retire from the stump, but he
persisted, buoyed up by his enthusiasm for the cause, and impelled to do
so by the realization that a personal fight was being made upon him. The
result was pathetic. Leaving a sick bed he would brave the hardships of
travel, the inclemency of the weather, to fill an engagement with the
intention of speaking briefly, but the inspiration and enthusiasm of the
crowd would lead him on to the full exertion of his strength, and after
a day or so he would be forced to return to his bed. Thus through
October he passed from the sick room to the stump and back again, all
the while growing weaker and sustained alone by his power of will. His
greatest meetings were probably held at Terre Haute and Fort Wayne, in
both of which cities he was greeted by great crowds notwithstanding a
downpour of rain, and at the former place he spoke in a great tent where
men stood for two hours with their feet in water. Notwithstanding the
personal fight that was being made upon him by the powerful interests he
had antagonized, he refrained in his speeches from special references to
his own services and confined himself to laudation of the achievements
of the national administration and playful ridicule of Hughes. Even the
bitter personal attacks upon him in this, his last battle, failed to
embitter him, and his last political addresses were singularly free from
vituperation or abuse.
He closed his campaign in the last political speech of his career, after
forty-four years upon the stump, at Brookville--and herein hangs a tale
illustrative of the sentimental strain that was strong in him. It had
been his custom for years to close at the little town of Brookville, and
early in the campaign he had promised to continue the policy. The
speaking campaign in Indianapolis had been strangely neglected and it
was not until the Saturday night before the election that plans had been
made for the final appeal of the two senatorial candidates at Tomlinson
Hall. It thus became necessary, if Kern were to speak in Indianapolis at
all, that he cancel his engagement for Brookville, but to the
importunities of his friends who urged upon him the importance of the
Indianapolis engagement he gave an indignant denial. “Certainly not,” he
snapped as though some discreditable thing had been proposed, “I have
been closing the campaign at Brookville for years, and I don’t propose
to disappoint those people.”
The result was that he did not speak in Indianapolis once during the
campaign.
Handicapped by physical weakness, lack of means, want of personal
organization, and pursued by a peculiarly venomous opposition which was
not political but personal and born of his friendship for organized
labor, he struggled through, preserving his cheerfulness and hopefulness
to the end, receiving the personal insults of the tribe of Kirby in
silence, and only retaliating with kindly references to his opponent.
When early in the evening on the day of the election it became apparent
that he had been defeated his first act was to congratulate his
opponent, a life-long friend, and to pay him a personal compliment
through the press.
I saw him the night following the election--a strikingly frail figure, a
little sad but not too sad to smile and joke in his accustomed way,
greatly disappointed but not so much so as to be embittered. After six
years of the most strenuous service, yielding his strength ungrudgingly
to the demands of his people, and vindicating the confidence of his
supporters by attaining as commanding a position in the senate as was
ever held by an Indiana senator, he now faced private life with
equanimity, poor of purse, broken in health, and nearing three score
years and ten.
His deepest concern that night was his failing health, and it was his
intention when congress convened for the short session in December to
resign the leadership and husband his strength. During the month of
November he did not greatly improve and he returned to his post of duty
in December in a serious condition.