Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/176

 the Judge attributes the difference between Morris and his brother to one thing: “opportunity.” “The State,” he says, “surroun'ded the boy who is in the penitentiary with everything to make him do evil; hence the State must support him now in the penitentiary. The State surrounded Morris with every influence to make him do right; hence he is growing up a good citizen who will support the State.” There is a great difference there. But I want to point out another “difference,” a “method” of the Judge to which he does not refer in anything he ever says about the celebrated injunction case of Morris, the “bad” boy, vs. the new cop on his corner. Recall what the Judge wrote into that injunction. How did he make the policeman obey the writ which the boy served on him ? The Judge simply told the policeman about the boy. Having told the boy about the cop, he related enough of the history of the newsboy to get the cop interested in the boy and in the game of correction which he and the boy were playing together. In other words, Ben Lindsey, the man of heart, reached for the heart of the policeman, and since the heart is a vital spot, it is no wonder “ de cop liked to a dropped dead.”

This, then, is Judge Lindsey’s method.

It is an old method. He didn’t discover it. A