The Beast

5. The Beast in the County Court

c 51 d W ELL, the Democrats carried the county and the state in November, 1900, and our “people’s party” was put in power; but I no longer had any of the illusions with which I had volunteered in the battle. I had found that most of my companions in the struggle were not patriots but hired mercenaries , fighting—as our opponents fought—under the black flag of corporation pirates. I had as much hope of getting my reform laws passed by the machine “bosses” as a man might have of getting a city charter for a South American town from a party of buccaneers who had taken the place for pillage. I had drawn up our threatened constitutional amendment for Gardener, but I knew he would never fight for it; and, of course, he never did. I was at a standstill, helpless, and not merely discouraged but convinced that there was nothing I could do. While I was in this state of mind, I was offered, as a “political reward,” the office of Judge of the County Court, to succeed Judge THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT C H A P T E R V T h e Be a s t c 52 d R. W. Steele, who had been elected to the Supreme Court and had left the county bench empty. Under the law, the Board of County Commissioners had power to appoint his successor for his unexpired term of nine months. Judge Steele had been one of the heads of the law firm for which I had worked so long as office boy and clerk; and he wished me to succeed him in the county court. The members of the Democratic Executive Committee signed a petition endorsing me for the place. Senator Patterson, with whom I had been associated as counsel in the famous “Tritch Will Case,” went before the commissioners without my knowledge and argued my claims. (It has been said that I got Senator Patterson’s support as the result of a political “deal,” and any one who believes that story is welcome to his credulity . I shall here content myself with denying it flatly. I have disproved it often enough on the platform.) As a result of this political and personal influence on my behalf, the Commissioners appointed me in December, 1900, and I took office in January, 1901. The Court House of Denver is the usual old stone building, smutted with smoke,* standing in the centre of a city square, with lawns and stone walks and elm trees in which the city sparrows are always noisy. On its front lawn, in the usual decorative fountains, some bronze-coated nymphs and cherubs disport themselves all winter in the memories of a discontinued shower-bath. On the pinnacle of the building’s dome there stands the inevitable emblematical figure of Justice, but it has been twice struck by lightning—equally emblematically , no doubt!—so that Justice has lost not only her scales but the arm that upheld them. Here, in the usual dingy court room, with the usual drone of court officials and the usual forensic eloquence of counsel addressing the usual yawns of bored juries, the county court was held. It was then—as it is, now—the busiest court in the state. It had jurisdiction to try election contests and such political lawsuits; it had a varied and general jurisdiction in civil cases in which prop- * It has been “sandblasted” since this was written. T H E BE A S T I N T H E C OU N T Y C OU RT c 53 d erty to the value of not more than $2,000 was involved—for which reason it was called “the poor man’s” and “the people’s” court; it was the court of appeal from police magistrates and justices of the peace; it had criminal jurisdiction in all “misdemeanours” and in “felonies” where the accused was under twenty-one years of age; and in addition , it was the probate court for the city and the county. I was just thirty years of age when I took charge of it. I knew that Judge Steele, whom I succeeded, was an upright and just judge, on whom no party and no corporation had had any “strings.” And in taking his place on the bench, I saw myself rising above all the political sculduggery through which...