Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian StreetStreet, Julian
General
Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street
Street, Julian
United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
It is impossible to consider Denver without considering Judge B.
Lindsey--although I may say in passing that I was urged to perform the
impossible in this respect.
Opinion with regard to Judge Lindsey is divided in Denver. It is
passionately divided. I talked not only with the Judge himself, but with
a great many citizens of various classes, and while I encountered no one
who did not believe in the celebrated Juvenile Court conducted by him, I
found many who disapproved more or less violently of certain of his
political activities, his speech-making tours, and, most of all, of his
writings in the magazines which, it was contended, had given Denver a
black eye.
Denver is clearly sensitive about her reputation. As a passing observer,
I am not surprised. With Denver, I believe that she has had to take more
than a fair share of criticism. She thoroughly is sick of it, and one
way in which she shows that she is sick of it is by a billboard
campaign.
"Denver has no bread line," I read on the bill-boards. "Stop knocking.
Boost for more business and a bigger city."
The charge that the Judge had injured Denver by "knocking" it in his
book was used against him freely in the 1912 and 1914 campaign, but he
was elected by a majority of more than two to one. He is always elected.
He has run for his judgeship ten times in the past twelve years--this
owing to certain disputes as to whether the judgeship of the Juvenile
Court is a city, county, or state office. But whatever kind of office it
is, he holds it firmly, having been elected by all three.
At present the Judge is engaged in trying to complete a code of laws for
the protection of women and children, which he hopes will be a model for
all other States. This code will cover labor, juvenile delinquency, and
dependency, juvenile courts, mothers' compensation, social insurance
(the Judge's term for a measure guaranteeing every woman the support of
her child, whether she be married or unmarried), probation, and other
matters having to do with social and industrial justice toward mother
and child. It is the Judge's general purpose to humanize the law, to
cause temptations and frailties to be considered by the law, and to make
society responsible for its part in crime.
The Judge is also trying to get himself appointed a Commissioner of
Child Welfare for the State, without salary or other expense.
Of all these activities Denver, so far as I could learn, seemed
generally to approve. A number of women, two corporation presidents, a
hotel waiter, and a clerk in an express office, among others, told me
they approved of Lindsey's work for women and children. A barber in the
hotel said that he "guessed the Judge was all right," but added that
there had been "too much hollering about reform," considering that
Denver was a city depending for a good deal of her prosperity upon
tourists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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