Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/255



bill to enable a majority of jurors to render a verdict. The company offered his firm an annual retainer, but Lindsey declared that it was a bribe and refused it. “This was my first sight of the grand System,” he says, “but I didn’t recognize it as such. I’ve learned since that this is the way the interests get their first hold on promising or troublesome young lawyers.” Lindsey put his bill through. Challenged as unconstitutional, it was first upheld, then thrown out by the Supreme Court of Colorado; “which gave me my first sight of the Supreme Court as a part of the System,” he says.

His practice developed along probate lines, and he found the laws obscure and unfair. He revised them, and his revision, enacted, has been highly praised by the law journals. Indeed, his knowledge of probate law was one of the justifi- cations for putting so young a man on the county bench. Lindsey is the author of the present election laws of his state. Everybody was com- plaining of the old laws, but nothing was done about them till Lindsey went to work and got them changed. I could go on for a page with practical reforms taken up by this man, all of them suggested by his accidental, personal contact with evils, and all having nothing to do with children. If Judge Lindsey had never heard of