Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/218

 j 1 What

makes bad girls bad ? And what makes men and women bad?”

That’s his answer, another question: one question; the fortunate, fatal question which got Ben Lindsey into his fights with the dishonest opposition of Denver, the fights which — because he won them, he and the children, and because they led him straight to the cause of crime, juvenile, and grown-up, too—have made the “kids’ Jedge” of Denver one of the leaders of the great war that is going on in Colorado. The outside world couldn’t understand why the people of his state wanted the Judge of the Juvenile Court to run for Governor; nor why he was willing to take the nomination. The reason, as we shall see, was that Ben Lindsey is no mere philanthropist, but (in the true sense of the word) a politician; no mere saver of little victims of wrong, but a man leading men to destroy the opportunities for evil-doing, and to give all the children of men a “show” to “do good.”

III. BATTLES WITH “bad” MEN

Early in the history of Denver’s Juvenile Court, a boy was arraigned for stealing lumber and sand from a contractor. The contractor