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were amazed after it was all over to see in the new laws “what Lindsey had been up to.” An officer in one of the telegraph companies said the “interests” would never have let either the child labour or the adult delinquency bill pass if they had known of them. The Judge had learned that the messenger service was a degrading influence for boys; they were sent to all sorts of vile places, saw all sorts of vile things, and caught respectable citizens in predicaments the knowl- edge of which made the boys cynical and vicious. So he advised, and he still advises, both boys and parents against the messenger service. But he wished also to have a club to hold over the companies; wherefore he had drawn into one of his bills a clause including officers of telegraph companies under the “adult delinquency law.” The companies, suspecting the Judge, twice sent a lawyer to the capital to see “Lindsey’s bill,” and he saw one bill, an inoffensive one, never the other. He didn’t know there was another. It was the other that “hurt our busi- ness,” he said. Thus beaten, the companies never dared to move for a repeal; they surrendered, and, calling on the Judge, came to an understand- ing with him about what they might and might not do with boys.

There was a fight on these bills, however.