In the Democratic county convention of that year he appears to have been a dominating factor. It was the year when thousands of old-fashioned Democrats found in party regularity a bitter hardship because of the nomination of Horace Greeley for the presidency. Even Voorhees in a speech acquiescing in the nomination acknowledged the bitterness of the pill. This lead to the appearance of a new Kokomo newspaper called _The Liberal_, with Kern’s name at the head of the editorial columns, and described by _The Kokomo Tribune_ as “a lively little paper full of Democracy, Greeleyism, Hendrickism and what-you-call-it.” It does not appear from the newspapers of that year that he participated very actively in the speaking campaign, but he was evidently in the midst of things from the occasional references of the Republican paper to his activities. Thus in describing a Democratic rally _The Tribune_ pictures him on horseback “riding along the procession urging cheers for Hendricks,” the nominee for governor; and at another Democratic meeting he is described as vehemently urging the unresponsive crowd to give “three cheers for Greeley” and to “go up-stairs and hear C. N. Pollard.” By 1874 we find his position as the Democratic leader in Howard assured and as the sole representative of the county he was attending caucuses of the State Committee at Indianapolis. In the county convention of that year he was the general in command. The papers reported that out of the thirty-two motions made all were made by Kern but three. It had by this time come to be the custom to top off all county conventions in Howard with a ringing party exhortation from the boy leader, and in ’74 he was still harping on the necessity for “reform,” though now with special reference to the conditions in the court house. “Kern was then called for and spoke on the subject of reform,” wrote the editor of _The Tribune_, “If he had lived in the days of the Reformation he would have been the head and front of that movement. As a reformer Kern is a success.” It was in this campaign that he pounded the Republican machine of Kokomo with such vigor as to cause evident distress. The county officials had been obsessed with a mania for supplying their offices not only with the necessities but with all the luxuries obtainable. He brought all his withering power of ridicule to bear upon arm rests, paper weights, dusters, fancy stationery and numerous other articles deemed non-essential by the average Howard county farmer of that day, but his greatest scorn was reserved for the “McGill machine.” This was a new invention for clamping papers together, and it was Kern’s policy in addressing an audience in the country to dwell at great length and in awesome fashion upon the “McGill machine” until his farmer audience had conjured up a picture of something resembling in general outline a threshing machine, and then to spring the tiny machine upon them with