Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/231

 my boss,

that’s kicking to have me sent to jail, don’t he sell cheap jewelry for eighteen carat fine ?”

In this and similar cases the Judge had to reach down below the teachings of the world of business to the nobility born in the “born thief,” to save him. “It’s mean to cheat and steal,” he said, and it was the success of this appeal that con- vinced Ben Lindsey that human nature was good enough to go to war for.

Of course, he didn’t realize at first what he was warring against. Brought up in a perfectly conventional way, his notions of life and economics were perfectly commonplace; but when men came to him and in the name of “Tnisiness,” the party, and property” besought him not to fight so hard for the children, he began to see that the enemy of men, as of children, was not men, but things. Once he and a police captain had a dispute in chambers over the custody of some boys arrested for stealing bicycles. The police wanted to hold the boys. Why? The Judge couldn’t make out till the officers said something about the owners of the wheels wanting to “get back their property.”

Oh, said the Judge, “I see the difference between you and me: you want to recover the property, while I want to recover the boys.”

The Judge recovered both,