Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/253



standing in with Evil, in the hope of destroying the particular little evils against which we are fighting. Lindsey won’t. This is the institutional idea; this is the fallacy which makes men sacrifice civilization — for no less is at stake—for their church, their party, or their grocery store. If Lindsey should make this common, almost universal, mistake he might build up his Juvenile Court, they tell him, into a national, yes, an international institution, and send his name reverberating down through the ages. But Ben Lindsey won’t do it; and he won’t because he sees that he can’t.

He can’t for two reasons. One, as he soon learned, is that the problem of the children isn’t a separate problem. Ben Lindsey discovered that bad children are made bad by the conditions which men create. And he went after some of those conditions, and when it was found that his legislation gave him power over adults that hurt children, as well as over the children, the leading citizens of Denver were incensed. Why? His authority over saloon and other vice interests loosened the hold the machines had over the vicious elements of society, and menaced the election frauds on which the business and political system of the state was built. And Lindsey saw, and he was told (though not in these words) that the