When the congress again convened after the summer adjournment of 1915 a better spirit of co-operation had been restored. After the passage of the Rural Credits bill, which is one of the great pieces of constructive legislation to the credit of the party, the greater part of the time was given over to the so-called “preparedness legislation” and the passage of measures recommended by the president to meet the international crisis which was growing more acute because of the short-sighted policy of Berlin. Although not enthusiastic over the preparedness program, and ardently anxious to prevent war, Kern accepted the leadership of his chief and supported him in all his measures. No member of the senate was more intimately identified with the president’s plan to prevent the threatened railroad strike in the late summer of 1916, as we shall see later on. II Never for a single moment in four years was a resting place in sight. President Wilson’s program “to destroy private control and set business free” was not concluded with the passage of the four or five great measures that caught the superficial eye, but it reached in its ramifications into all the byways of national life. Time and again when the senate was struggling under a deluge of important administrative measures, with the end far distant, and the members, work-weary and anxious to get back home, Senator Kern was appealed to by the president to add as many as half a dozen bills to the calendar for disposal during the session. These were always important and essential to the president’s purpose of destroying private control and setting business free, but they were not always appreciated at the time by the press or general public at their true value. While always in harmony with the spirit of the pledge of the party they frequently went beyond the specific promises and thus made it possible for Democratic senators sweltering in the heat to question the necessity of their enactment as a party duty. None of these but delighted Kern. And thus he was constantly engaged in feeling out the sentiment of his party colleagues, constantly consulting with the leaders, and reporting to the White House. Not infrequently the prevalent sentiment was in favor of postponement, but on the gentle, tactful but firm insistence of the president he would renew his efforts, usually ending in conferences of the Steering committee and party caucuses and the decision to act. While the machinery in the senate appeared to the casual observer to almost invariably be moving smoothly, there were many tempests in the teapot, occasionally a disposition to revolt. The opposition was always ready with its taunts that the Democrats of the senate had abdicated their senatorial prerogatives to the White House, and some wise observers for the press were fluent with their articles charging degeneracy to the senate and recalling the “good old days” when senators were “strong