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.”