The more important news he learned that hot afternoon as he sat in front of the Congress Hall Hotel was that the National Committee had selected Alton B. Parker of New York for the temporary chairmanship to deliver the keynote speech and that this had been challenged by Mr. Bryan, who had made it quite clear that he would fight. At that time he had no idea that he would be called upon to play any part in the contest other than to cast his individual vote in the convention. But there were various embarrassing angles to the situation thus presented. Many years before he had formed a personal friendship for Judge Parker and this friendship had grown with the years. The National Committeeman from Indiana had voted for Parker, which complicated the situation from the viewpoint of state politics. He entertained a momentary fear that the prospective fight might tend to the disruption of the party and the destruction of its prospects. But at the same time he understood perfectly the motives actuating Mr. Bryan and sympathized with them. With some forces known to be reactionary, lining up aggressively behind a man thought by the masses of the party west of the eastern mountains to be reactionary in his trend of thought, and with Mr. Bryan sounding the warning that the selection of that man for the temporary chairmanship would be a triumph for reaction, Senator Kern instantly knew his position in the fight. It was not a pleasant one; it came to be a far more important one than is generally known. The National Committee had entrusted a sub-committee of eight to select the temporary chairman and this committee first proffered the position to Mr. Bryan, who declined, and then to Senator Kern, who refused to serve. It was the suggestion of both Mr. Bryan and Senator Kern that a thoroughly progressive Democrat, nationally known as such, should be chosen. The forces of Champ Clark had a candidate who measured up to the desired standard in Ollie James of Kentucky, then a member of the house, and the Wilson forces favored the election of Robert L. Henry, a representative from Texas, who also harmonized with Mr. Bryan’s idea of a temporary chairman. When the sub-committee met eight of the sixteen voted for Parker, three for James, three for Henry, one for Kern and one for O’Gorman. The one vote cast for Senator Kern was not the vote of the Indiana member, Mr. Taggart. The Indiana member did not vote for Kern because the senator had written him personally that he did not desire the position.