Judge Ben B. Lindsey who has secured many things for the children
during the last ten years, such as playgrounds, detention schools,
public baths, probation system, summer outings, fresh-air camps, etc.,
says in the _Survey_:
What began to loom upon me almost to oppress me, was the
injustice in our social and economic system that made most of
these palliatives necessary. I began to see more than I ever
saw in my life how the foundation of the republic is the home,
and the hope of the republic is in the child that comes from
the home, and that there can be no real protection, no real
justice for the child, until justice is done the home. More than
through books I saw through the tears and misfortunes of these
children, the defects and injustice in our social, political
and economic conditions, and I have to thank the child for my
education. After ten years I owe more to the children than they
owe to me. They have helped me be a better man, and, I am sure,
a more useful and serviceable one. I had learned to love to
work with them and for them in the boys’ clubs, the recreation
centers, through the court and probation work and in other ways,
and when I began to see, as I thought I saw, some of the causes
of poverty, misfortune, misery, and crime, I began to question
myself. Could I help do real justice to the child unless I could
help smash some of these causes that were smashing the homes,
crippling the parents and robbing the child of his birth-right?
(1420)