Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/212



be good. That’s too negative for husky kids, and the River-Front gang were a husky lot. The Judge says boys are bad because, while they have lots of opportunity to do wrong, they have none to do good. So, as in the case of mis- chievous boys, he gave these criminals opportu- nities to do good. There were other “fellers” starting on careers of crime. If they were allowed to go on, they would be caught, jailed, and made criminals by the police, who, though they didn’t mean to be, were really criminal- manufacturers. The game was to beat the police and beat public opinion by showing the opposition that the Judge was right about kids, that “there ain’t no bad kids.” So the game was for the River-Front gang to bring in kids that were going wrong, get them into the Court gang, and thus prove by the good they all could do together that “it” worked. And “it” did work.

5 The loyalty of the River-Front gang to the Judge as leader of their new gang was superb. It was mistaken sometimes. Once when Jack Heimel’s mother was away, he slept in a cheap boarding-house. A drunken man cried out that he had been robbed, and he accused Jack and a friend of Jack’s. The lodging-house keeper knew Jack and, of course, believed the charge, so, sending for the police, he placed himself in