Meanwhile the editor of _The Tribune_ and Kirkpatrick seemed to feel in need of all possible help and the Republican organ contained numerous attacks on the boy candidate under the caption “Communicated.” In one of these the writer described Kern as “a young lawyer with a reputation for two things--making smart speeches and smoking cigars”--a reputation he lived up to throughout his life. He closed the campaign at Alto to an audience of his boyhood friends, and if _The Tribune_ is to be credited followed this later in the night on the streets of Kokomo with “a bitter partisan speech.” The election resulted in his defeat by so small a margin that _The Tribune_ editorially confessed its chagrin. It is to be presumed that he carried out his wager with Tony Jay, a Kokomo packer, and blacked that worthy’s boots on the street in front of the Clinton House--the leading hostelry of the town. The campaign had firmly established his reputation as a very young man with a very old and level head, possessed of eloquence, tact, political judgment, and all the elements of leadership. And this before he was of age! Living as he was to do throughout his life in Republican communities he was not to attain the goal of his ambition until late in life, but had he lived in England and been thus equipped he would probably have entered parliament like Fox and Pitt as a mere boy and gone far. II In the year 1870 the political services of the boy leader were not confined to preparing resolutions and making stirring speeches. He was the most potent factor in the establishment of a Democratic newspaper in Kokomo. The story of the origin of _The Radical Democrat_, which was to change its name later to _The Kokomo Despatch_ and as such to take high rank among the party papers of the state, is intimately interwoven with the political history of Kern. In the spring of that year W. J. Turpin, anxious to establish a Democratic paper and in search of a location, was advised to turn his attention to Kokomo, and “for further information to write J. W. Kern.” He did write to the boy leader and the encouragement from Kern impelled him to make a personal investigation, and he went to Kokomo. A youth of precisely Kern’s age, twenty, and without a penny of capital, his project could have held forth little promise of a successful issue to one with less than Kern’s bubbling buoyancy and audacity. He has told the story of his conference with young Kern in some reminiscences published in later years. “Mr. Kern was not yet one and twenty. He was literally slopping over with soul and life. Recent college triumphs had inspired him with a hope and confidence for the future. I recognized in him at once the uncaged Nubian lion of the community. Upon one point we were agreed--the capital was of but secondary and slight importance to the furtherance of our object. We closed, and from that moment began a fervent and unabating friendship.”