Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/256



the problem of the children he would have been known as a man doing a man’s work for men.

But the incident in his career which will show this best is his exposure of the County Commissioners. That also was begun by accident.

At the close of the Juvenile Court one Saturday afternoon, the Judge picked up idly from the clerk’s desk a paper, which, as he talked, he glanced at. “To 1,000 sheets paper, $280.” It was a bill, and the price interested the Judge. He asked the clerk about it. The clerk hadn’t seen the bill. He “guessed” it was there by mis- take; bills didn’t come to him; “must have been meant for the clerk of the County Board.” Lindsey sent the clerk to “see Mr. Smith, of the Smith-Brooks Publishing Company (which furnished the paper), and ask if the bill was correct.” The clerk brought the answer that his (Smith’s) “damned boy had taken the bill to the wrong place, and the price was none of our business.” The Judge sent to the County Clerk for other bills charged to the County Court.

“I was amazed at the charges,” he says. Six letter files at $6 apiece; these cost me personally twenty-eight and thirty cents apiece. Paper which was charged for at the rate of $48 a thousand I could get for $6. I spent the night on those bills, and the next (Sunday) morning I took expert