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6. The Beast and the Children
- University Press of Colorado
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c 65 d M Y WORK was certainly waiting for me. I had found our Colorado probate law in a muddle. The sections conflicted, and the conflict led to litigation. The cost of administering the estates in the hands of the court was excessive, because the politicians had taken advantage of the conditions to create “jobs” for their henchmen. There was so much red tape that if we wished to sell “real estate” for a ward of the court it took us six months. In short, it was imperative that the law should be codified; and I organized a county judge’s association and went to work on it. In the end, we not only simplified and harmonized the statutes, and protected the widows and orphans from legal exploitation, but saved estates in probate $50,000 a year by reducing the court rations of the political “workers.” The fee system needed reformation, and we had to work on laws for that purpose, too; but there is no space here to go in to the details THE BEAST AND THE CHILDREN C H A P T E R V I T h e Be a s t c 66 d of our struggle with the politicians in the matter. We finally succeeded only in getting a special law that forbade the collection of fees for prosecuting children. Above all we needed “contributory juvenile delinquency” laws so that we might be able to prosecute parents for neglecting their children , and dive keepers, gamblers and such for tempting and seducing children; we needed laws establishing a juvenile court to which all children should be brought, instead of having them arraigned in the magistrate’s court, the county court or the criminal court, haphazard ; we had to obtain, for this juvenile court, probation officers with police powers so that we might arrest the wine-room keepers and such, whom the police, for political reasons, were protecting; we needed a detention school, so that children might no longer be put in jail; we had to strengthen the child-labour law and the compulsory school law; we needed trade schools, public playgrounds and public baths. But the Legislature was not to meet for twelve months, and I knew that before we could obtain any of these laws we must arouse a public demand for them. My work during 1902 was all schemed out to that end. And since the evils that we attacked are common to all our American cities, I wish to give the story of our fight in some detail. Those politicians in Denver who love darkness and gum shoes are never tired of screaming from their burrows that I am a “grandstander .” This is to them an epithet of opprobrium, you understand . They apply it to Roosevelt, La Follette, Folk, Jerome, Hughes and every other politician who has raised the window and shouted “Burglars!” when he heard the centre-bit in the night. It was in the year 1902 that I was first branded “a grand-stander.” Ineffaceable stigma! I appealed to the people to help me obtain laws for the people. I even did that! I appealed to them directly and indirectly, from the platform whenever I could get any of them before a platform, and through the newspapers whenever a reporter gave me an interview or an editor allowed me a column for an article. And pursuing the same policy [44.197.191.240] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:41 GMT) T H E BE A S T A N D T H E C H I L DR E N c 67 d I even used my place in the county court to arouse public opinion, and did it with a “sensational” denunciation that was flagrant “grandstanding ” of the most deliberate sort. It happened in this way: I found on my return to the bench that the law against the wine rooms was not being enforced. I found that the gambling hells were all open. I made the rounds of them at night, unrecognized, and saw boys in knickerbockers at tables evidently reserved for their use. I saw indescribable things in the wine rooms and the dance halls connected with them, where young girls from laundries, factories, hotels and restaurants were being debauched. (For example, three girls who had been enticed into a saloon were discovered next day in the cellar of the building, by a woman passing on the street, who heard their groans; they were lying there...