The reference to the Nicholson law was thoroughly understood by all his hearers. In the campaign of 1894 the Republicans had laid claim to being the party of temperance and had held forth the promise to the temperance people that a Republican assembly would mean temperance legislation. This pretense was accepted at face value by the temperance workers. At the same time it was generally understood that one of the Republican leaders had entered into a secret understanding with the “wets” at Evansville that any temperance measure presented would be either pigeonholed or passed in a form that would make it utterly worthless for its purpose. Soon after the legislature met Representative Nicholson had introduced his bill and the game of hide and go seek was on. Seldom if ever have more exciting scenes been witnessed about the state house during a legislative session than those of this period. On days when it was known that any phase of the bill would be discussed in either branch of the assembly the galleries were packed to overflowing and great throngs jostled about in the corridors. The temperance forces were organized and awake. In the pulpits of the capital on Sundays the ministers demanded the passage of the bill. This general interest was embarrassing to the Republican politicians, who had not counted upon being called on to do their tricks of legislative legerdemain in the white light of publicity. There was no opportunity to stop the progress of the bill in the house, but when it reached the senate it was referred to the temperance committee, whose chairman, strangely enough, was notoriously unfriendly to temperance legislation. Here it was expected to slumber--and here it slumbered for quite a while. It was at this juncture that Kern entered the story. At this time he held the traditional views of the Indiana Democracy on the subject of personal liberty and sumptuary legislation. He was himself a teetotaler. But he had a profound contempt for hypocrisy, and in his fight to expose the perfidy of the double-dealing policy of the opposition it is probable that he, more than any other one man, was responsible for the passage of the Nicholson law.