THE LIFE OF JOHN WORTH KERN [Illustration: JOHN WORTH KERN--1913] THE LIFE _of_ JOHN WORTH KERN _By_ CLAUDE G. BOWERS INDIANAPOLIS THE HOLLENBECK PRESS 1918 COPYRIGHT NINETEEN HUNDRED EIGHTEEN BY CLAUDE G. BOWERS FORT WAYNE, IND DEDICATED TO JOHN WORTH KERN, JR. AND WILLIAM COOPER KERN “_It is fine to feel that one’s boy may become a great man; but I would rather that my boys should be good without being great, than to be great without being good._”--SENATOR KERN. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the preparation of this biography, in the midst of the duties of an exacting profession, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Vice-President Marshall, Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo, Secretary William B. Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, Judge Alton B. Parker of New York, Senator Saulsbury of Delaware, Senator Kenyon of Iowa, Senator Lea of Tennessee, Senator Thomas of Colorado, Senator O’Gorman of New York, Senator Taggart of Indiana, Leon O. Bailey of New York, “Mother” Jones, Andrew Furseth the Emancipator of the Seamen, Jackson Morrow of Kokomo, Indiana, John Callan O’Laughlin of Chicago, Louis Ludlow of Washington, D. C., Thomas Shipp of Washington, D. C., W. H. Blodgett and Kin Hubbard of the _Indianapolis News_, for data, verifications and reminiscences. And I am under the deepest obligations to Robert E. Springsteen of Indianapolis, and Howard Roosa, editor of the Evansville Courier, for services too numerous to mention. C. G. B. INTRODUCTION VICE-PRESIDENT’S CHAMBER, WASHINGTON, D. C. Because carping Pilot asked “What is truth” and did not stay for an answer, the world has thought that question to be the one unsolved riddle. Yet there are many other attributes to which answers have been given that are almost, if not altogether, as great riddles. What constitutes greatness has received as many answers as there have been men to express them. It all depends upon the mental process of a man as to whether his fellow man has attained unto greatness. The paladin of finance would consider it a joke to be told that an Egyptologist was a great man; the doer of deeds can never think of greatness as an attribute to the dreamer of dreams; and thus it is that the estimate by one man of another will only pass current with those of like mind.