The Democratic leaders in Indiana approached the campaign of 1900 with a feeling of considerable pessimism. The disaffected element which had left the party in 1896 on the money issue had not yet returned to the fold, and it seemed improbable that the white-heat enthusiasm of Mr. Bryan’s following in his first campaign could be maintained. The election of 1898 had brought no rift in the clouds, and the party in power seemed hopelessly entrenched. With conditions prosperous, our armies but recently victorious, our possessions increased through the acquisition of Porto Rico and the Philippines, with all the pomp and circumstances of a national triumph with an enemy waving the flag, the Democratic party was about to make its appeal to the people on an abstract question of political morals. We were to discuss the wrongs of a people thousands of miles distant, of another race and color, of whom hundreds of thousands of Americans had never heard. And while these wrongs could not inevitably react upon our own people the practical politician and psychologist of the stump was painfully conscious of the difficulty of making that point sufficiently impressive. Under these circumstances there was no great demand for places on the state ticket, and as late as the first of May no one had manifested any desire to lead the party as its candidate for governor. About the first of May, Frank B. Burke announced his candidacy. He was in many respects one of the most remarkable men in the political history of the state, at times under the proper inspiration thrillingly eloquent, courageous as a lion, and possessed of a personality that endeared him to friend and foe alike. As United States district attorney under Cleveland he had won the admiration of the bench and bar and made an impression upon the people in the streets. But with all his splendid qualities he was lacking in one of the essentials of safe leadership--he was utterly deficient in tact and always preferred a fight to a compromise. In brief he was a genius with all that that sometimes implies of weakness. At that time I was writing editorials on _The Sentinel_, and, being one of Burke’s youthful idolaters, I wrote a fervent editorial eulogy on the day of his announcement and took it to Samuel E. Morss, the editor and former consul-general to Paris, for his approval. He read it with evident amusement and tactfully suggested that while Mr. Burke was a brilliant and able man, there might be other candidates and it would not be advisable for _The Sentinel_ to take such a pronounced stand that early. I did not know at the time, being scarcely out of my teens, that the “organization” forces were bending every effort to persuade Mr. Kern to enter the lists. The first choice of the organization was Mayor Taggart, who persisted in his refusal to make the race. It was then that the politicians turned to Kern.