Late one afternoon a tired judge was seated at his bench in the city
of Denver. The docket showed that the next case to be brought before
him was one for stealing. Anxiously he waited for the hardened
criminals to be brought in, when lo and behold! three boys hardly in
their teens were brought before him.
When asked what they had stolen, they replied, "Pigeons." Beside the
boys stood the old man whose pigeons had been stolen. To say that he
was angry was putting it mildly.
As the boys described the pigeon loft and how they came to steal the
pigeons, the judge became very absent-minded; for his mind went back
to the time when he himself was a boy and had been in a crowd that had
stolen pigeons. Odd as it may seem, the judge's old gang had, years
before, visited this same pigeon loft and stolen from this same old
man. Little wonder then that the judge had a warm place in his heart
for the boys who were now in trouble.
But the old man had been annoyed for months, had watched hours to
catch the boys, and now that he had caught them, surely they should be
punished severely. He was sure the boys should be sent to prison.
What should the judge do under the circumstances? Certainly he must
see that the pigeons were protected, for they were fancy stock and the
old man made his living by raising them.
[Illustration: BEN B. LINDSEY
"The Kids' Judge"]
Would sending the three boys to prison protect the old man and his
pigeons? No, for no doubt the boys belonged to a gang, and unless the
whole gang were caught, the thefts would continue. For a long time the
judge studied the matter until finally he told the boys, that if they
would go out and bring in the other members of the gang, he would be
"white" with them; he would give them a square deal.
The boys eyed the judge critically. Did he mean what he was saying?
The boys liked his looks, for he was young and not much larger than
themselves. Then, too, he did not talk down at them from the bench,
but had left his bench, sat among them, and talked like one of them.
It wasn't long before the boys were convinced that the judge was their
friend. He understood them, and his heart was in the right place, as
they put it. Accordingly, they went out and brought in the other
members of the gang. In his talk with the gang, the judge was as kind
and frank as he had been when talking with the three boys the day
before. He told the boys how the old man made his living by raising
pigeons, and he asked them whether they thought it was square for them
to steal his pigeons. They agreed that it was not.
Then he told the gang how the old man and the police had caught the
three boys stealing the pigeons, and he asked them whether they
thought it would help matters to send the boys to prison. As this
remedy did not appeal to the gang the judge asked what should be done.
After some discussion, the members of the gang agreed that the best
thing to do was to give the judge their word of honor that they would
never molest the pigeon loft again. Thus it was that the old man's
rights were protected and at the same time the boys were saved from
the disgrace of a prison sentence.
The above is but one among hundreds of instances in which Judge Ben B.
Lindsey of Denver has shown that he is indeed the boy's friend. Since
he is the boy's friend, all boys are interested in his life.
Since he was born in Tennessee in 1869, it is not difficult for us to
figure that he is now in the prime of life. As he looks back over his
boyhood days he admits that he can recall little else than hardship.
His father, who had been an officer in the Confederate army, died when
Ben was about eighteen years of age. Before the war the Lindseys had
been in comfortable circumstances, but so great were the ravages of
war that at its close the family had lost everything. Ben, therefore,
was born in poverty. So severe were the hardships in the South that
the Lindseys came north and finally settled in Denver, Colorado. When
Ben was twelve, the family was so poor that the lad could not go to
school. Forced to work while yet so young, he had to pick up any odd
jobs that came his way. For a time he was messenger boy, and then he
managed a newspaper route. Since he was once a newsboy, is it any
wonder that he understood newsboys? It is also interesting to know
that he afterward became a judge in the same city in which he used to
peddle newspapers.
Though Ben could not attend day school, he did go to night school
regularly. As he was not robust, it was difficult, however, for the
lad after delivering messages all day to settle down to hard study in
a night school. But Ben liked books and was not afraid of hard work.
A little later he secured employment in a real-estate office. Here he
had some leisure time. Can you guess what he did with it? Did you know
that about the best way to learn whether or not a boy is destined to
become a great man is to find out what he does with his leisure hours?
Ben, now a young man, spent his time in studying law. To play games or
go to shows would have been much more interesting than studying great
law books, but he was determined to climb regardless of the cost.
Accordingly, at the age of twenty-four, he was made a "full-fledged"
lawyer.
In his practice of law there was nothing exceptional until at the age
of thirty-two he was made county judge. For weeks he discharged the
usual duties connected with his office until one evening a case came
before the court that changed his entire life. The story is as
follows:
"The hour was late; the calendar was long, and Judge Lindsey was
sitting overtime. Weary of the weary work, everybody was forcing the
machinery of the law to grind through at top speed the dull routine of
justice. All sorts of cases go before this court, grand and petty,
civil and criminal, complicated and simple. The petty larceny case was
plain; it could be disposed of in no time. A theft had been committed;
no doubt of that. Had the prisoner at the bar done it? The sleepy
policeman had his witnesses on hand and they swore out a case. There
was no doubt about it; hardly any denial. The law prescribed precisely
what was to be done to such 'cases,' and the bored judge ordered that
that thing be done. That was all. In the same breath with which he
pronounced sentence, the court called for the 'next case,' and the
shift was under way, when something happened, something out of the
ordinary.
"A cry! an old woman's shriek, rang out of the rear of the room. There
was nothing so very extraordinary about that. Our courts are held in
public; and every now and then somebody makes a disturbance such as
this old woman made when she rose now with that cry on her lips and,
tearing her hair and rending her garments, began to beat her head
against the wall. It was the duty of the bailiff to put the person
out, and that officer in this court moved to do his duty.
"But Judge Lindsey upheld the woman, saying: 'I had noticed her
before. As my eye wandered during the evening it had fallen several
times on her, crouched there among the back benches, and I remember I
thought how like a cave dweller she looked. I didn't connect her with
the case, any case. I didn't think of her in any human relationship
whatever. For that matter, I hadn't considered the larceny case in any
human way. And there's the point: I was a judge, judging 'cases'
according to the 'law,' till the cave dweller's mother-cry startled me
into humanity. It was an awful cry, a terrible sight, and I was
stunned. I looked at the prisoner again, but with new eyes now, and I
saw the boy, an Italian boy. A thief? No. A bad boy? Perhaps, but not
a lost criminal.
"'I called him back, and I had the old woman brought before me.
Comforting and quieting her, I talked with the two together, as mother
and son this time, and I found that they had a home. It made me
shudder. I had been about to send that boy to a prison among criminals
when he had a home and a mother to go to. And that was the law! The
fact that that boy had a good home; the circumstances which led him
to--not steal, but 'swipe' something; the likelihood of his not doing
it again--these were 'evidence' pertinent, nay, vital, to his case.
"'Yet the law did not require the production of such evidence. The
law? Justice? I stopped the machinery of justice to pull that boy out
of its grinders. But he was guilty; what was to be done with him? I
didn't know. I said I would take care of him myself, but I didn't know
what I meant to do, except to visit him and his mother at their home.
And I did visit them, often, and--well, we--his mother and I, with the
boy helping--we saved the boy, and today he is a fine young fellow,
industrious, self-respecting, and a friend of the Court.'"
So deep was the impression that this case made upon Judge Lindsey that
he could not keep from thinking about it. As he thought, he made up
his mind that boys and girls should not be tried in the same court
with grown people. He also concluded that in trying a boy the
important thing was not _what_ he had done, but _why_ he had done it.
To discover and remove the cause of the crime was of much greater
importance than punishing him after the crime had been committed.
Furthermore, he thought it very wrong to put a boy in a prison with
hardened criminals. He looked upon the prison not as a place where men
are made better but as a school of vice. To send a boy to prison,
then, must be the last resort.
While it was not hard for Judge Lindsey to see all these things, it
was difficult indeed for him to make the people of Denver see them.
Gradually, however, he carried on his campaign of enlightenment until
today Denver is pointed out as one of a few cities that knows how
successfully to handle its boys. With its excellent juvenile court and
its sane probation laws it has blazed the path for other cities to
follow.
And to whom are these changes due? We answer, to the man who by dint
of hard work struggled all the way from newsboy on the streets to
judge on the bench--Ben B. Lindsey.