On the following day Kern accompanied Turpin on a canvass of the town for subscriptions, heading the list himself, and during the day procuring more than a hundred subscriptions. The Democrats were willing to take a risk and the Republicans could see no possible danger in the competition. The embryo editor thereupon plunged into the country townships with the view to increasing his circulation list, leaving with Kern the task of collecting enough real money to make a payment on an office. At length arrangements were made whereby each issue could be put out at a cost of $25, and a Democrat was persuaded to furnish office rent free. Such was the beginning of _The Kokomo Despatch_. This, however, did not end Kern’s connection with the paper, for he appears by Turpin’s admission to have been a copious contributor to the editorial columns, and throughout the remainder of his residence in Kokomo he was charged at various times with plying his pen in the interest of the party and the paper. When the editor sold the paper in the late summer of the year of its birth to Doctor Henderson he acknowledged his indebtedness to Kern’s pen in the following tribute: “John W. Kern has contributed much to the success of this enterprise. To him I shall ever feel under obligations, and I am also proud that the party in this county numbers among its young men one of so much earnestness and purity of purpose who promises to be truly a Defender of the Faith.” Thus in his twentieth year he had established the reputation of being the most effective Democratic orator in the county, had made the most spectacular and brilliant campaign made by a Democrat in Howard in many years, given the Republicans their first real scare in a generation, won recognition as a leader of tact and judgment, and made possible the publication of a Democratic party organ in that wilderness of radical Republicanism. III In the spring of 1871 Kern’s growing popularity was attested by his election by the city council, composed of five Republicans and three Democrats, as city attorney--a position to which he was to be repeatedly re-elected by successive councils and without regard to the political complexion of that body. Although a strong partisan his winning personality exerted an influence beyond the party wall, and that generosity and geniality toward his political opponents which was to lead Senator Beveridge years later to pronounce him “the Bayard of the Hoosier Democracy” was even then pronounced.