The Beast

Introduction

c xli d Introduction J UDGE LINDSEY is known to the world at large for his work in the Juvenile Court of Denver; and, to his little courtroom there, come Children Society agents from all parts of the states, visitors from England, officers from Germany, and government officials sent from Sweden, Austria, France and Japan to study his laws and learn his methods. But to himself, to Denver, to his friends, and—most of all—to his enemies, his famous Juvenile Court is only an incident, a side issue, a small detail in the man’s amazing career. For years he has been engaged in a fight of which the founding of his Juvenile Court was only the merest skirmish. It is a fight that has carried him into politics to find both political parties against him. It has been carried on without the consistent support of any newspaper, and with now one, now the other, and at times all the party organs in Denver cartooning and attacking him. The thieves, the gamblers, the saloon keepers and the prostitutes I n t roduc t ion c xlii d have been cheered on against him. There have been times when even the churches have been afraid to aid him. The men of wealth—the heads of the street railway, the telephone company, the gas and electric company, the water company, and most of the other Denver corporations and combinations of finance—have made it their particular ambition and personal aim to beat him down and crush him out of public life. He has fought alone—at times absolutely alone. And he is still fighting! He has been offered bribes that might buy a millionaire. He has been promised a career in politics, a fortune in law. He has been given the hope of worldly preferments that might seduce the highest ambition . When these have failed to win him, he has been threatened with all the punishments that the most unscrupulous power and the bitterest hate could conceive. To destroy his reputation, false affidavits have been sworn out by fallen women, accusing him of the lowest forms of vice. Attempts have been made to lure him to houses of ill-repute where men were lying in wait to expose him. The vilest stories about him have been circulated in venomous whispers from man to man and woman to woman. Friends have been frightened or bought or driven from him. His life has been threatened. Special laws have been introduced at the State Capitol against him. The Denver Chamber of Commerce has publicly branded him an enemy of the state. At times the very lights in his rooms at the Court House have been cut off— as the last and smallest annoyance of spite—and he has had to go to the corner drugstore at night and buy himself candles to continue his work! And why? For what has he been fighting? What terrible thing has he sought to attain? Read his story. Here it is, as told by himself , without malice, in a sort of good-humoured indignation, with a smile that is sometimes bitter in spite of a patience that seems beyond words. It is a story that would be appalling if it were not for the fact that through it all he himself moves in the very figure of hope. It is a story that is true not only of Denver but of any other American city in which a Lindsey might appear. It is a story of the fight of one man I n t roduc t ion c xliii d against the conditions that threaten to make the American democracy a failure in government and a farce in the eyes of the world. And it is a story of achievement. Without money, without powerful friends, without the dominating qualities of a personal popularity , this one man, in an obscure struggle, has written, upon the statute books of Colorado, laws that have been copied round the world. He has codified probate laws, purged election laws, and instituted a reform in criminal jurisprudence that is as revolutionary in our day as the teachings of Christ were in the “eye-for-an-eye” days of the Jews. The list of reforms he has obtained, charities founded, public improvements instituted and political steals balked, shows nearly a hundred items. He has obtained nothing for himself but the praise and support...