Publisher's Synopsis
JUDGE LINDSEY is still fighting the Beast in Denver. In a pamphlet entitled "A Secret Political League, Who and What It Is, and Court Cases Involving the Sex Problem," he answers its latest attack and lays bare its methods -- old methods, used in every city when reform grows real and menacing. The people of Denver have stood by Judge Lindsey and his court through repeated elections; the weapons left to his enemies are deliberate misrepresentation of cases tried in the Juvenile Court, personal slander, and barren attempts at recall promoted for the sake of publicity. " The pamphlet discloses the character of the so-called Woman's Protective League, the organization which has attacked the Juvenile Court. It shows that the league is a fictitious organization, with one known woman member, and the former president of a street railway company as its most active supporter. The identity of this league with the privileged interests in Denver, which Judge Lindsey has heretofore pilloried before the nation, needs no further comment than the passages quoted by Miss Parks from his present broadside. The interest of the pamphlet lies not so much in the overwhelming rout of these critics as in its description of the methods which have made the Juvenile Court of Denver the great human institution that it is.The cases on which the league based its charges against the court were sex cases, involving the protection of girls. Its accusations were distributed broadcast through circulars with trumped-up evidence taken from jail blotters, and exaggerated or partially suppressed reports of actual cases. Charge after charge is taken up by Judge Lindsey in full, and in showing this falsity he discusses the whole question of the handling of such cases in the Juvenile Court.The importance of an elastic probation law, as opposed to the old severity of sentence which made testimony and convictions difficult to secure; the effort to get such a law passed; the avoidance of publicity and consequent degradation; the possibility of winning confidences and confessions, and of starting the boy and girl out again, safe, instead of ruined -- these are part of the policy of the Juvenile Court. It is against such a wise, delicate and courageous handling of a terrible problem that criticism -- if there is criticism -- must be directed. It must be directed against a judge who has made it his office to help, instead of dryly to administer the law; and who is, at the same time, uncompromisingly the foe of hypocrisy and corruption. So those privileged interests in Denver hate Judge Lindsey. Of course they do. He cares for human life -- boys, girls, men and women; they care for money -- their money. That is an irreconcilable warfare. We are glad that the Beast has failed in it once more; that the charges against the Juvenile Court have been publicly examined and proved to be untrue. We did not need to read Judge Lindsey's pamphlet to disbelieve them; but we do need to read it as a live record of a big work, carried on unflaggingly in the face of harassing annoyances and ill health; a record of devotion and splendid achievement.--The Survey: Social, Charitable, Civic, Vol. 31
