Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/127

98 some twenty-five states and a few hundred cities have done—you might lose the significance of Judge Lindsey. You might learn his method s and miss the man. You might imitate his “kids’ court,” and make a mistake with both the “kids” and their “Jedge,” as they call him. And you certainly would do, as Denver desires to do, and Colorado—limit the meaning of Judge Lindsey’s life-work to the problem of the children.

Ben Lindsey’s “methods” are as applicable to grown-ups as to kids. Man has a way of inventing devices to help him to be a man; a spear, an army, the Church, political parties, business. By and by the aid to his weakness comes to be a fetish with him, a burden, an end in itself, an institution. He decorates his spear, keeping a commoner weapon to hunt with. His army returns from fighting his enemies to conquer him. Priests declare the Church holy and, instead of ministering to men, make men minister to the Church. Political parties, founded to establish principles for the strengthening of the State and its citizenship, betray principles and manhood and the State for the “good of the party.” Business, the mere machinery of living, has become in America the purpose of life, the end to which all other goods—honour, religion, politics, men, women and children, the very Nation itself—