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I I AddWonal comments/ ' — ' CommentaliesstfipWmentaires This itsffl it f Hmid St th* rtduetiwi ntia dMcksd taslow/ Ct dooMMnt Mt fihn* « the highest am'bigoi"'^Cn fhl'f ' ^r to win him, he has beeh f W ! , ^^''^ ^"'''"1 punishment; that he mo ^Tn^"^ V'^ "" ">e -d the bitterest Wr,d""creC\rr Jt^jLttTLtnUi^^ «ffi-«"-were about him have Cn d Tul.^^d ," "' '"""'' whispers from man to rr,«„T venomous Pr-ends have b^n friX ^T** 7""*" '° ^'""*''- from him Hflffe hf r'"* u' ^°"^''' «' ^"ven 'aws have been il„!? !!" '^^'^^^^n-d- Special against him XSen'rCh' t ''/'^ ^'p''"" has publiclv brandi^ r ^^^"^^^ "f Commerce At times the vervl^ht ™ v '"''"^" **' '^' ^"''e- House have bIe?cSS " at hT^ ^' '''^ ^""^ -oyanceofspitr-t^r'^ir-^'^r^^^^^ INTRODUCTION xiii Ihe comer drugstore at night and buy himself candles to continue his work! m.f »''''^J 1°' "^^^ •"" '>«' »^n fighting? What terrible thing has he sought to attaiJ? Read hu, story. Here it is. as told by himsSf without malice, in a sort of good-humS md.gnat.on. with a smile that is sLetimerSr m spite of a patience that seems beyond words It IS a stoiy that would be appalling if it we.^ not for the fact that through it all he hiTelJ moves m the yeiy figure of hope. It is a sto^tha » true not only of Denver but of any other Amerf! can city in which a Lmdsey might appear, it « a s o^ of the fight of one man against the conditions that threaten to make the American democracy a failure in government and a flrc^ in the eyes of the world. And it is a story of achievement. Wi / out money, without powerful friends, without the dommating qualities of a personal popularity this one man. m an obscure struggle, h^ written upon the statute books of ColoLo. laws S He been copied round the world. He has codi- f«!^-,''/°J'^ l"^'' P"'^^ ^'^''""n '«^s. and msttuted a reform in criminal jurisprudence that IS as revolutiona^ m our day as the teachings of Jew Th: 'r ^:«yr'°'"-eye>' days of the Jews The list of reforms he has obtained tut^^rH'Tf-"'; P"'''^ improvements ins^: tuted and political steals balked, shows nearly a xiv INTRODUCTION hundred items. He has obtained nothing for him- self but the praise and support of some citizens of Denver, and the curse and enmity of others. The Reverend Henry Augustus Buchtel, Chancel- lor of the Denver University, and ex-Govemor of the State of Colorado, in the year 1904, coupled his name with Christ's— no less! — and in the year 1907 called him, through the newspapers, "a nincompoop" and a "fice dog"! Those are'the two crowns that have been offered him: a halo and a fool's cap. Which shall it be.' To vhich is he entitled in the eyes of the democracy whose battle he is helping to fight ? Here follows the evidence. The choice shall be your own. H. J. O'H. THE BEAST THE BEAST itntani J'" T" ""' ''^^^ «^°^^d ^ forest ot entangled branches, tree trunks, fallen timber that ,f "^f.-'^-b^^h; and the problem w^t ^rannh ''^^ r''"" °^ ^ *«« among the branches; you sp..d a paw in the crook of 1 1 ee rth/r T^f °"' ''^^ ^^''''' °f ">« -"'"al's body n the bark of a trunk; an ear pricked up from the underbrush; an eye stared from the boL of a fal en tree. And when, turning the picture on •ts s.de, you gathered those clues toSe' i^ 17 '^l' r'^'^^-^' y°" ^^--'■ot the housed cat you had expected, but the great "cat" oMll jungle, crouching there, with such a h eatenl S na iistenmg m the lowest underbrush _4 4 THE BEAST and fallen timber of our life. It is there — wait- ing. To some it has appeared to be a house cat merely; and it has purred to them very soothingly, no doubt. But some have come upon its claws, and they have been rather more than scratched. And others have found its teeth, and they have been bitten — bitten to the soul. A few, who have watched it and stalked it carefully, know that it is, at the last, very like the dragon in the old fable of Greece, to whom some of the people were daily sacrificed. For it lives upon us. Yes, it lives upon us — upon the best of us as well as the worst — and the daughters of the poor are fed to it no less than the sons of the rich. If you save your life from it, it is at the price of your liberty, of your humanity, of your faith with your fellows, whom you must hand over to it, helpless. And if you attack it ! I propose to tell, in this story of my own experi- ence, what happens if you attack it. I propose to show the Beast from its tail to its nose-tip, and to show it as it is when it has ceased to purr and bares its teeth. I propose to mark its trail and name its victims, to warn you of where it lurks and how it springs. I do not hope to set you on in any organized assault upon it— for I have learned that this is too much to hope — but I trust that I shall be able to show you where the fight agauist it is being fought, so that you may at least recognize your cv.n defenders and not THE BEAST 5 ■I he Beast m the jungle! How it fi„f,f=. a -an who truthfull/wnL the sTo^^ offi ea^' paigns agabst it will not write fromTnvl, ?• I colli. J with Kle S't"'-,"'." ""■ enemy. There is no other way Tu . ^^"" CHAPTER I FINDINO THE CAT mmmM magnificence T hnH k ™'^»<^'e of height and and we had been entertained on thf way bvT' stones of an old forty-niner with . ^ ^ ^ tache. who told us how "e had ^ot ^h'^ff T°"'' those prairies where we now saw oSy an'l? "^T was not precocious; his stories ilterlf^P ' than anything eise'on the":;; "l^ TT^H so hard at the old pioneer that I ti:. u '^*^ him now. I believerif I /arnl^ tS ;S:r« 7 8 THE BEAST My schooling was not peculiar; there was noth- ing holier than thou" in my bringing up. My father, bemg a Roman Catholic convert from the Episcopalian Church, sent me to Notre Dame Indiana, to be educated; and there, to be sure I read the "Lives of the Saints," aspired to fc/ a samt and put pebbles in my small shoes to "mor- tify he flesh, because I was told that a good priest, Father Hudson -whom I all but ^. shipped - used to do so. But even at Notre STf ' *!l T"^ """'^ " °«°^«'' I ^'^ home- sick for the farm; arid at last I was allowed to return to Ja.,.son to be cared for by my Protestant relatives. They sent me to a Baptisf sch^S UI I was seventeen. And when I was recalled to Denver because of the failure of my father's health. I went to work to help earn for the house- hold, with no strong attachment for any church and with no recognized membership in any bir'''"'!" ^^"'^ 'V °°^ ^'^^ ^"'^ not look back upon his past and wonder what he should have become m life if this or that crucial event had that ifThl .f ^i •^"""^- " -^-« to ^- that ,f It had not been for the sudden deuth of my father I, oo, might have found our jungle beast a domestic tabby, and have fed it its prey withou reahzmg what I w,..s about. I should Led a lawyer, I know; .or I had had that ambE; from my earliest boyhood, and I had been cZ farmed m it by my success in debating at school I FINDING THE CAT « Colorado was the 'W,». Proposition that and proved aetttCt ;'"',' " 'l'^ Union." Ri.f T .u ij . ' ^ '^*'^ « lawyer's "winrf "1 compelh-ng handTl'e ^andtv"'! "',"' "•'''' them began. ^ struggle with iand officerio^eLrtrtrh^JSef^r- emment land; and I had slv^ 8i50^f °" ^°'^- before my work there cea^S I foil ""V"^""^ b;lreo^^d':^rcteT ?«' -^^^^^^^^^^^ denied having received ^L''' '''"'P'' ''^^ ^S™' had lapsed of thei;'beteTSi. ''^ 1"''^^ """d we got nothing 0.,^^ ^-^ ^^'' '^^*"^' mortgaged- wc wei^^^li ^ "f"'"^ '^"'^ been furnifhTlitU LTse oX^^^T^'^ °^ " '« later we moved to a r^l f^ '^^•'""^= «°d ^^ THE BEAST the office opened, and did janitor work at niehl when .t closed. After a month of that. I gTa better place, as office boy. with a mining con,! pany. at a salary of m a month. And finally my younger brother found work in a law office and I swapped jobs" with him - because I wished to study law! "^tuuse i It was the office of Mr. R. D. Thompson, who still practises m Denver; and his example as an incorrupt.bly honest lawyer has been one of the best and strongest influences of my life. I had that one ambition - to be a lawyer Associated with it I seem to have had an unusuai curiosity about politics. And where I got either he ambition or the curiosity. I haye'no idea My father s mother was a Greenleaf.* and related to the author of "Greenleaf on Eyidence." but my father himself had nothing of the legal mind. As a boy, I.ying m Mississippi, he had joined the Confederate army when he was prepai -g for the Uniyersity o Virginia, had attained the rank of captain, had become General Forrest's private secretary and had written - or largely helped to write -General Forrest's autobiography He was ideahstic. enthusiastic, of an inyenli/e gen! lus with a really remarkable command of English and an absorbing love of books. My mother's' father was a Barr. from the north of Ireland. a_Scotch-Irish Presbyterian; her mother was a •A New England family, to which the poet Whittier wa, relatrf. I FINDING THE CAT n oclist. The members of the family were practical be„t.^^that I know of. toward either ,aw "o^ And yet one of the most vivid memories of mv chrldhood m Jackson is of attending a 1^^ mUy w.h my grandfather and heaLg a S that for years af^^'aS I^^e^ersTw^V Re2 g^'?si:Ttm!rSn^-rs myself mto Mr. Thompson's office I 17. prejudices, I do not know what it is However my own observations " of what was gomg on about me were already opening my eyes I had read, m the newspapers, of how the Denver Repubica, won the elections by fraud -bv ba lot-box stuffing and what not - and i had lollowed one "C!r.nr».," o vi ^" from Dre^J t ? ^^ • ^""^ °" '^^ streets, irom precir t to pr^cmct, with his gang of J* THE BEAST election Ihfevcs. and had seen them vote not once but five times openly. I had seen a young man, whom I knew, knocked down and arrested for "Sl""^. t ^"'"'••""»'=*'" when he objected to Soapy Smith's proceeding; and the policeman who arrested him did it with a smile and a wink. When I came to Mr. Thompson to ask him how be. a Republican, could countenance such thines. he assured me that much of what I had b^n readmg and hearing of election frauds was a lie — the mere "whine" of the defeated party - and I saw that he believed what he said. I knew that he was an honest, upright man; and I was puzzled. What puzzled me still more was this : although the ministers in the churches and "prom- inent citizens " in all walks of life denounced the election crooks" with the most laudable fervour, the election returns showed that the best people in the churches joined the worst people in the dives to vote the same ticket, and vote it straight. And I was most of all puzzled to find that when the elections were over, the oppo- sition newspaper ceased its scolding, the voice of mmisterial denunciation died away, and the crimes of the election thieves were condoned and forgotten. I was puzzled. I saw the jungle of vice and party prejudice, but I did not yet see "the Cat " I saw Its ears and its eyes there in the under- brush, but I did not know what they were I FINDING THE CAT 13 thought they were connected wilh the RepuWi- can party. ^ " And then I came upon some more of the brute's anatomy. Members of the Legislature in Denver were accused of fraud in the purchase of state supplies and -some months later - members of the city government were accused of commit- tmg similar frauds with the aid of civic officials r.nd prominent business men. It was proved in court^ for example, that bills for $3 had been raised to $300. that $800 had been paid foH bundle of hay worth $3. and $50 for a yard of cheesecloth worth five cents; barrels of ink had been bought ^r each legislator, though a pint would have sufficed; and an official of the Po^ ce Department was found guilty of conniving with a gambler nan.ed "Jim" Marshall to rob an express at the meetmgs of leading citizens who denounced the grafters and pa.s.d resolutions in support of the candidates of the opposition partV I waited to see the crimmals punished. And they wej not punished Their crimes were not denied They were publicly denounced by the courts and by the mvestigatmg committees, but somehow appeals. Some mysterious power protected them, and I, m the boyish ardour of my ignorance 14 THE BEAST (to me) great confederation of righteousness and all-decent government, the Democratic party. It would be laughable to me now, if it were not so "sort of sad." Meanwhile, I was busy about the office, copy- ing letters, running errands, carrying books to and from the court rooms, reading law in the intervals, and at night scrubbing the floors. I was pale, thin, big-headed, with the body of an underfed child, and an ambition that kept me up half the night with Von Hoist's "Constitu- tional Law," Walker's "American Law," or a sheepskin volume of Lawson's "Leading Cases in Equity." I was so mad to save every penny I could earn that ins'.ead of buying myself food for luncheon, I ale molasses and gingerbread that all but turned my stomach; and I was so eager to learn my law that I did not take my sleep when I could get it. The result was that I was stupid at my tasks, moody, melancholy, and so sensitive that my employer's natural dissat- isfaction with my work put me mto agonies of shame and despair of myself. I became, as the boys say, "dopy." I remember that one night, after I had scrubbed the floors of our offices, I took off the old trousers in which I had been working, hung them in a closet, and started home; and it was not until the cold wind struck my bare knees that I realized I was on the street in my shirt. Often, when I was given a brief I 15 FINDING THE CAT to work up for Mr. ^ hompson, I would slave over It until the small hcu, of the morning and then, o his disgust- ..nd my u.npeakable mortifica- tion-find that r.;y work .vas valueless, that I had not seized Vu- f li^damental points of the case, or that I had built all my arguments on some misapprehension of the law. Worse than that, I was unhappy at home. Poverty was fraying us all out. If it was not exactly brutalizing us, it was warping us, break- mg our healths and ruining our dispositions. My good mother -married out of a beautiful Southern home where she had lived a life that (as I remembered it) was all horseback rides and Negro servants -had started out bravely m this debasing existence in a shanty, but it was wearing her out She was passing through a critical period of her life, and she had no care no comforts I have often since been ashamed of myself that I did not sympathize with her and understand her, but I was too young to under- stand, and too miserable myself to sympathize. It seemed to me that my life was not worth liv- ing - that every one had lost faith in me - that I should never succeed in the law or anything else -that I had no brains -that I should never do anything but scrub floors and run messages And after a day that had been more than usually discouraging in the office and an evening of exasperated misery at home, I got a revolver and In h m f I ^ ^« THE BEAST some cartridges, locked myself in my room, con- fronted myself desperately in the miLr. p;t7e p3S Vit^r^^^ ^^^'°' '« -y -Pfe. and The hammer snapped sharply on the cart- ridge; a great wave of horror and revulsion swept over me ,n a rush of blood to my head, and I dropped the revolver on the floor and threw myself on my bed. ■' By some miracle the cartridge had not exploded; but the nervous shock of that instant when I felt he tngger yield and the muzzle rap against my forehead w.th the impact of the hammer - that shock was almost as great as a very bullet in the bram. I reahzed my folly, my weakness; and I went back to my life wlih something of a man' determmafon to crush the circumstances that had almost crushed me. Why do I tell that? Because there are so many people in the world who believe that pov- erty IS not sensitive, that the ill-fed, overworked boy of the slums ,s as callous as he seems dull Because so many people believe that the weak and desperate boy can never be anything but a weak and VICIOUS mun Because I came out of that morbid period of adolescence with a sympathy for children that helped to make possible one of the first courts established in America for the protection as well as the correction of children Because I was never afterward as afraid of FINDING THE CAT 17 kl-^s! TJ "{ "" V'^''"-^. -y own coward- h! ^ 7^^^° "'^ "g^'^'« of the Beast in the courts and in politics threatened me with all the abominations of their rage if I did not commit moral suicide for them, m^y fear of yidd ^^ to them was so great that I 'attacked th m more desperately than ever. It was about this time, too, that I first saw the eater. That was dunng the conflict between Governor Waite and the Fire and Police Boa 3 of Denver. He had the appointment and removal of the members of this Board, under the law, and when they refused to close the public gambling houses and otherwise enforce the laws againsf vice m Denver ^ ■ read them out o, office. tS refused to go ,efied him, with the police 2 their backs H. threatened to call out the militL and dnve them from the City Hall. The who e town was m an uproar. lowed the excited crowds to Coliseum Hall to hear he Governor speak, and I had seen him S belT "i' '''''■"^ P^'^P'^^'' -'th his long white beard and patriarchal head of hair, and denomice miquity and political injustice and he oppressions of the predatory rich. He appealed to the Bible in a calm prediction that, if the reign of lawlessness did not cease, in time to come " bloS would flow m the land even unto the horses' '8 THE BEAST bridles " (And he earned for himself, thereby the nickname of " Bloody Bridles " Waite ) Now it began to appear that his prediction was about to come true; for he called out the militia. and the Board armed the police. Mv brother was a militiaman, and I kept pace with him as his regiment marched from the Armouries to attack the City Hall. There were riflemen on the towers and m the windows of that build- ing; and on the roofs of the houses for blocks around were sharpshooters and armed gamblers and the defiant agents of the powers who were behind the Police Board in their fight. Gatlin^ guns were rushed through the sf^eets; cannon were tramed on the City Hall; tl .ng lines of militia were drawn up before the building; and amid the excited tumult of the mob and the deventh-hour conferences of the Committee of i^ibhc Safety, and the hurry of mounted officers and the marching of troops, we all waited with our hearts in our mouths for the report of the first shot. Suddenly, in the silence that expected the storm, we heard the sound of bugles from the direction of the railroad station, and at the head of another army - a body of Federal soldiers ordered from Fort Logan by President Cleveland, at the frantic call of the Committee of Public Safety — a mounted officer rode between the hues of militia and police, and m the name of the President commanded peace. FINDING THE CAT 19 The militia withdrew. The crowds dispersed The police and their partisans put up their guns and the Beast, still defiant, went back sullenly to cover. Not until the Supreme Court had decided that Governor Waite had the right and the power to unseat the Board —not till then was the City Hall surrendered; and even so, at the next election (the Beast turning polecat), "Bloody Bridles" Waite was defeated after a campaign of lies ridicule, and abuse, and the men whom he had opposed were returned to office. I had eyes, but I did not see. I thought the whole quarrel was a personal matter between the Police Board and Governor Waite, who seemed determined merely to show them that he was mas- ter; and if my young brother had been shot down by a policeman that night, I suppose I should have joined ia the curses upon poor old "Bloody Bridles." ' However, my prospects in the office had begun to improve. I had had my salary raised, and I had ceased doing janitor work. I had become more of a clerk and less of an office boy. A num- ber of us "kidc" had got up a moot court, rented a room to meet in, and finally obtained the use of another room in the old Denver University build- ing, where, in the gaslight, we used to hold "quiz classes and defend imaginary cases. (That by the way. was the beginnuig of the Denver Uni'ver- sity Law School.) J read my Blackstone, Kent, ''^ THE BEAST l"ri~r^^^ "•^''' """^ '^^y - ^^'i I began really to get some sort of "grasp of the law" m^ A^r^ 1 ' Thompson would eive me demurrers to argue in court- anrJ k. . K*^® told that T Koj T '^°"«. and, havmg been juiy cscs, and it set me on my feet A man had been held by the law nn = -nts of obtaining goods under^ /alle pre LlJ He had been tried on the first count by araTsist: ht^'HrhaTbr^'^' ''^ ^"^^ "^^^ -q"" cl ^^er^t^-hras^y^^^^^^^ fj,„ • I P' *^ '° 'he person defraudpd -the jury, by good luck, found against him it was the turning point in my struggle I give me ccmfidence m myself; and it taufht J !Z2 Andnow I began to come upon "the Cat" again. FINDING THE CAT 21 . I knew a lad named Smith, whom I considered a victim of malpractice at the hands of a Denver surgeon whose brother was at the head of one of the great smelter companies of Colorado. The boy had suffered a fracture of the thigh-bone, and the surgeon —because of a hasty and ill-consid- ered diagnosis, I believed— had treated him for a bruised hip. The surgeon, when I told him that the boy was entitled to damages, called me a blackmailer — and that was enough. I forced the case to trial. I had resigned my clerkship and gone into part- nership with a fine young fellow whom I shall call Charles Gardener* — though that was not his name — and this was to be our first case. We were opposed by Charles J. Hughes, Jr., the ablest corporation lawyer in the state; and I was puzzled to find the officers of the gas company and a crowd of prominent business men in court when the case was argued on a motion to dis- miss it. 'Ihe judge refused the motion, and for so douig — as he afterward told me himself — he was "cut" in his Club by the men whose pres- ence in the court had puzzled me. After a three weeks' trial, in which we worked night and day for the plaintiff — with X-ray photographs and medical testimony and fractured bones boiled out over ni ght in the medical school where I prepared •Thi. i3 one of the Jew fictitious names used in the story. Judge Lind- »ey wuhes It disguised "for old sdce's Mke." 'uoge una •» THE BEAST l^T!r'''*^"u'^/'°°'* "'•'^«''' '» ""e •■" our favour and the case had to be begun all over again. The econd time, after another trial of three weefa ;^ J";y hung" again, but we did not give u^' The word had gone about the streets: "Go up and see those two kids fighting the corporatioS heavyweights. It's more fun Ihan a^cSs" And we were confident that we could w tawe knew that we were right. One evening after dinner, when we were sitting n he dmgy httle back room on Champa Strm "bLT ."' ^ f." °®^^' ^- M- Stev^enson- Big Steve -politician and attorney for the Denver City Tramway Company, came' hou.der! mg in to see us - a heavy-jowied, heavy-waisted red-faced bulk of good-humour-'looklia^' fte had just walked out of a political cartoon.^ "Hello boys, he said jovially. "How's she going? Mat ing a record for yourselves up in court eh ? Mak W a record for yourselves. Well!" "^^^tng He sat down and threw a foot up on the desk and smrled at us. with his inevitable cigarette n h^s mouth -his ridiculously madequate dgarette in? K Strf ^ "' ^' ^""^"^ '•'^« ^ fat boy blow ^g bubble^) "Wearing yourselves out. cT? Worl^ng night and dayP Ain't you getting 'abt; FINDING THE CAT gs ••Uh-huh. YouwilI.eh?" Helaughedamusedly. One man stood out against you each time, wasn't there? There was. "Well," he said, "there always will be You ain't gomg to get a verdict in this case. You cant. Now x'm a friend of you boys, ain't I? Well, my advice to you is you'd better settle that case. Get something for your work. Don't be a pair of fools. Settle it." " Why can't we get a verdict ?" we asked He w-inked a fat eye. "Jury'U hang. Every tune I m here to tell you so. Better settle it."* We refused to. What was the use of courts if we could not get justice for this crippled boy? What was the use of practising law if we could not get a verdict on evidence that would convince a blind man? Settle it? Never! So they went to our client and persuaded the boy to give up. "Big Steve," attorney for the tramway com- pany! The gas company's officers in court' The busmess men in ulting the judge in his Club! 1 he defendant s brother at the head of one of ,,,.'!""'*" frP^»'^«' I began to "connect up tne Cat. _Gardener and I held a council of war. If it •M«ny of the conversations reported in this volume are riv.n I memo,y and they are Uable to em.rs of memory ZTeCflZ^ . Unjn o, ^pression^ But they are no, liable to L^rt subsl^ Thl' we the unadorned truth, clearly recollected. g g t ** THE BEAST was possible for these men to "hang" jurfe, whenever they chose, there was need of a liw to inake something less than a unanimous decision by a jury sufficient to give a verdict in civil cases Colorado needed a "three-fourths jury law " Gardener was a popular voung man. a good h^fTi' * "r^"' "^ '"""'*' ^™'«™»' orders, a hail-fe low-w'ell-met. and as interested as I was .n poht.cs. He had been in the insurance busN ness before he took up law. and he had friends — as he had often spoken of doing In the intervals of the Cmith suit, we had had a killed by a street car, had been unable to recover damages from the tramway company, because the company claimed, under the law. that her child was worthless alive or dead; and there was need of a statute permitting such as she to recover damages for distress and anguish of mmd. We had had another case in which a young factorv worker had been injured by the bursting of an emery v.heel; and the law held that the boy was guilty of 'contributory negligence" because he had continued to work at the wheel after he had found a flaw in it - although he had had no choice except to work at it or leave the factory and find employment elsewhere. There was need of a law giving workmen better protection in such circumstances. Why should not Gardener enter ,i^ FINDING THE CAT u the Legislature and introduce these bills?— which I WM eager to draft. Why not. indeed! The state needed them; the people wanted them; the courts were crippled and justice was balked because of the lack of them. Here was an opportunity for worthy ambition to serve the community and help his fellow-man. That night, with all the high hopes and gener- ous ideals and merciful ignorance of youth, we decided - without knowing what we were about — to go mto the jungle and attack the Beast! CHAPTER II THE CAT PURH8 and .:Sit w vffu'n;''^"'; ''7"'"''^ skyed. with the veryspa kle of han °'"' • ''^'■ air; and on the crown of its ^,1/"^^:^' '" '" tie prospect of .J p . '"' ^"'""8 ">« 'oman- raised i s dLe ^^T'' '^" '^"»''' Capitol tion and the^e.^eSon If Jpt", X^""- tol. I confess, was to me a Jrt f ■ ^'*P'" erected by the Common" eajth of C T^T '"""P'^ to iusticp tn tu . ' ,^*''»''" °f Colorado to Jaw. havil': ; o^rtp'utc th ^^'^■^-~^''' '^*' the oppressed or£ope tnTr'"',^' °' '»" of no nobler work tLn / u"''^ ^^'^^'^^ the assembly 1.° it oHhlt TZ-'^"'' '""'^^^ '» eternal mountains on the f. "'^' ''''^ '^°«« of freedom overhead st f"""" '"'^ "'^^ «"» so much. wit.:urshamttji.r;ir 7'r inexperience. t, ;« * " T"" *"*^ his the dome of the Caoitol fh 'i "'^ "^" ^"^^^ °° look to me now ^ ^*' '"'' S^'"«" " another It was the 3,ear 1897. I was about twenty- I J THE CAT PURRS „ eight years old. and my partner. Gardener wa, h~e years younger. He was more wo Id tw"" with brTet "h" "'"= '°' "'"'^ ' '"^'^ •'^^^ bu"; ^^usintt d"" oTth'e fil' • 'r '"' ^- ">' friends and 'o.^liZ'^-lJ^^-ZT'^ ^^^ .ay -and through his innumerXfonn:; on7 here and there, with this n.an and that fraletr brmgmg he cases that Icept u. employed £ 1 was a bilver Repubican"- r „ ri a man whom we both admirpH r„ r^, Hco such a good man in his home! And Ws I " ;-'^''"tabIe!" At Christmas time, when free k^ of food were distributed to the po^ ' tV ^'^ T^""""- H« «•«'« prominent in th^ fraternal orders and used his political power to help the needy, the widow and^he orphan He had an engagmg manner of fellowship, a persona! ^agnetism. a kindly interest in aspWng "oun ' ^en. a pleasant appearance - smooth a^d Zk hked h.m: and he seemed to discover an affeftion *® THE BEAST attracted some pubHc aVi-'""'''^ '^^' ""' ^'^ paper notice b/otl^rbX^with" "t ""^■ poration heavyweiVhls" n .u * ""^ «=°'" against the Xon th. ? *'"'■ '^""^ ^'^ *^'««'' the factory owS But .hTT7 *'°'°P''">' ''"'^ us for the eaTwifh A- J^**^. "''' ^"o'"' to to the inLlf of t B?"^-- P«°«'™'«d for this offico «t fi,„ • '° ''^ nominated proofs (to us) that hf J u^ one -the sure ^timate se^ret^ S fh. ^"^ *'^™"^'' '« '»»« of the coSL^y^thrj roi'"""? -°'*^^ rSd^tirr.^^^^^^^^^^^^ himself la^S gIIL™ ^""•*°' q"«"t«s that he well bui,r alwa^lTdrred trf'^"'!?"''^' ambitious; I did not wond rlh^t^S '°' adm^d him and made much oftim'^ i^^^^^ THE CAT PURRS 29 Ifftn»? r''^ ^'^^^"^ ""^ 'o him with an affection rather more than brotherly. n, • /^'u.,r''''"S '° '•'^ politicians about our projected b.Us. Indeed, from the first, my i^ e ° s[ dener s. His des.re to be in the Legislature was due to a natural ambition to "get on" in Se T wealth and distmction that come with power Such ambitions were, of course, beyond ml I Dy proxy, m Gardener's person. I enjoyed in he same way. his gradual penetration Sind v^lT' '" P°''"^«- I «--' with Wm. that tSe party convention, to which we had at first looked as the source of honours, was really only a ort of re ^''-.?^ -hich the Boss (eld Ve:^L ' bv Grih" • *'? ^°' °<"»'°«tion were selected by Graham m advance -in secret caucus with his ward leaders, executive committeemen Tnd such other "practical" politicians as "BTste"" ZaTri^T "°°:;!^''°"' W'th more or less show of ^dependence, did nothing but ratify his choice. defecates ^of,h ''"""°^ ^^"^ °^ *^« '=»'-- "m!?,fK the convention, Gardener said: WLats the use of talkmg to those small fry? If we ca.1 get the big fellows, we've got the rest They do what the big ones tell them - and wS ^ THE BEAST do anything they aren't told. You leave it to me. I had only hoped to see him in the Lower House but he, with his wiser audacity, soon pro- claimed himself a candidate for the Senate. " Ww can get the big thing as easy e the little one." he said. I m going to tell Graham it's the Senate or nothmg for me." And he got his promise. And when we knew, at last, that his name was rea% on "the slate" of candidates to be presented to the convention, we were ready to throw up our hats and cheer tor ourselves - and for the Boss. Ihe convention met in September. 1898. There had been a fusion qf Silver Republicans. Demo- crats, and Populists, that year, and the political S'. v.^''" apportioned out among the faithful machme-men of these parties. Gardener was nominated by "Big Steve." in a eulogistic speech tha was part of the farce; and the con- vention ratified the nomination with the unanimity of a stage mob. We knew that his election was as sure as sunrise and I set to work looking up models for my bills with all the enthusiasm of the iirst reformer. Meanwhile there was the question of the cam- paign and of the campaign expenses. Gardener had been assessed $500 by the committee as his share of the legitimate costs of the election, and Boss Graham generously oflFered to g,t the money for him "from friends." We were rather inclmed to let Graham do so. feeling a certain delicacy THE CAT PURRS g, about refusing his generosity and bebg aware wi not tT "T ""' -"-naires. But Graham was not the only one who made the offer- for example, Ed. Chase, since head of the SeS syndicate .n Denver, made similar proposals of kindly a.d; and we decided, at last. t^hatCrhaps t would be well to be quite independent'^ oir law practice was improving. Doubtless, it wol continue to improve now that we were "in rTX'- with the political powers. We put up $250 fa fa and paid the assessment. ^ ^ The usual business of political r. 'lies, mass- meetmgs and campaign speeches followed in du" course and m November. 1898. Gardened was iTt." f '*' ^'"'"'' °° the fusion ticket I had been busy with my "three-fourths jury" bill studying the constitution of the State of Colorado comparmg it with those of the other states ^ri making myself certain that such a la" as t' pTo posed was possible. Unlike most of the sJIL constitutions Colorado's preserved invidate 1 right of juiy trial m criminal cases only, and there^ fore It seemed to me that the Legi lature had plenary power to regulate it in civil suits. Ttound hat the Supreme Court of the state had so dedded m two cases, and I felt veiy properly elated there seemed to be nothing to prevenVus having a llw hat should make "hung" Juries practical l/i^po^T sible in Colorado and relieve the rn,.r/= t abuse that thwarted justice in scot orc^s Z ^* THE BEAST the same time I prepared a bill allowing parents ^cZZ ?r'^" '"' "'^^'^^ °^ mind-Ten f m,L K • ^^ *' ''Wy *« a man who has found h.s proper work and knows that it Ts f^ bg wor?d "^^*^'P'-- *« -veil to an adiT lea'rn-that'rhr'i:'^^ r**"* ' ^^ -- '<> wHoii,t:tL:fp\^ntt:-trk^-a^^^^^^ ment. that most of the bills passed wet HZZ wrth appropriations and such necessary deUils of administration, and that only twenty or thirtv THE CAT PURRS 33 fourths iuiy" bill. Since Graham seemed to doubt ts constrtutionality, I went to the Attorney Genera - whom I convmced. I came back with the ^s^tant s dec.s.on that the Legislature had power to pass such a law. and Gardener promptly tetr^ duced It m the Senate. ^ ^ It proved at once mildly unpopular, and after a prehmmary debate, in which Ihe senators rather laughed at .t as visionary and unconstitutional,! was referred to the Attorney General for h s ZTh- ^7f.^^'-"fidently. Toouramaz! ment he reported it unconstitutional, and the very assistant who had given me a favourabt opS before, now conducted the case against it. Noth" mg daunted. Gardener fought to get it refe^d to the Supreme Court, under the law; and the Senate sent .t there. I got up an elabo;ate br Lf! had t printed at our expense, and spent a day in arguing .t before the Supreme Court judges. Th^J held hat the Court had already twice'^found the matters, and Gardener brought the bill back report from the Judiciary Committee By this time, Boss Graham was seriously alarmed. He had warned Gardener thatTheblj hT «S^.'°t''" ^"'^ '° "^- -'^^ »>« -"^ lus friends. It was particularly distastef,,! •t seemed, to the Denver City Tramway CompSJ.' H : '* THE BEAST fh"e m1 ^''^ P™'°'-> •>« -id. that if we dropped got at leaat four thousand dollars' worth of u7 gallon a year to handle. To both P-rT J myself, flushed with succel a^d ro^seH 'th' ba«Ie this offer seeded an an,using cou ess on' of defeat on the part of the oppositfon; and we went ahead more gaily than ever We were enjoying ourselves. If we had fw.™ a pa.r of ehums in college, we could Z havet" a better t.me. Whenever I could get away from my court cases and my office work I Z^l T ^ watch the fight in L Sennas 1^/1"^ Freshman hurrying from his studies to ee his ma football game. The whole atmosphere S the Capitol - w.th its corridors of coloured mrWe Its vistas of arch and pillar, its burnished metal balustrades, its great staircases - all its maTstv of nch grandeur and solidity of power -Xctd me w.th an mcreased respect for the funcSSs^ government that were discharged there and fo, the men who had them to discharge. I felt the reflection of that importance beaming upon myseH when I was introduced as "Senator gZm law partner, sir"; and I accepted the bows aL greetings of lobbyists and legislators with ^, tie pleasure m the world. When Gardener got our bill up for its final readmg m the Senate, I was there to watch. «,d Ml , THE CAT PURRS „ li tickled me to the heart to see him it fine figure of an orator the hanH? ' """^' " the Senate; and he wa tt afST r ""\'^ voice and look ao in^^ "■ '° '*'®e his as his words He haT "' ?^ ^^'^™'"«d understand that Sy tt 5^ ''' T'''"" '« would have him as an nh r 7^"""^ ^'' ^'» every other meluri; and th^t T^'"^"' °" realized that it would liwisllo tT 7"'^""^ way. The bill was palsT BufifT ^'^ '"'^ through the Lower Ho^e ton J ■''*'^ '** «» there, to be taken SrHf bv Sf " "" ^^"' with the tongue in the cheek n^^dolr^"^"'^ ^ I met Boss Graham in hU . ;• Ben." he greeted te "mItWh'"- "''^"°' that partner of yours?" 7 1 '^.'""'ter with worried. "Come "nhL" ^"«'^?'^'- he looked tohaveatalk^lIhy^ou^Vred^m'- 7' ''''^ side room and shut'the doof ''^2 W, V" » he said. "Did von K^,„ "*''' here," a boat you'lfbe in with ^h'?' ''u^ '° '^'"'^ ^hat fo get/if you e'r wt tfi'd' ^""'^ ''^-^ h. a jury suitP Now th^; tell "1 T'^'"''''''' tramway offices" — th."ffi '^'' '"f* down at the Tramwi; Company - "tEr/ ''' ''.^"^^' ^'V a lot more legal help ^W?^ «* ^^'^g to need that they'll appoint vou h ^^"'^ P'^^P^'^t But they can't erentT^^' *'"''*°' «^°"n«el. hright bis ;i:rs ?th':yr 'thr ^"^ ^°" t^e.. Y-^ow that all fhtmVn'^^t^tt n ' II ^^ THE BEAST law is in coT^oration business. I don't see what you re i.^.iting for." I explained, as well as I could, that we were figh .ng for the bill because we thought it w« nght - that it was needed. He did nf t s^mT n^l •>rtLa^• '^"^ '"^' '•''^ ^"'' ^' ''^'^ -- to n^^'I'.'J ^"u^'^' """^'^^ "'^'^^ "P o"r minds to put , I through. And we're going to try." You II fuid you re making a mistake, boy," he wa^edme^-You'llfindyou'remakingamisL^" We laughed over ,t together - Gardener and I. It was another proof to us that we had our oppon- ents on their knees. We thought we underXod Grahams position m the matter; he had made friendly with Mr William G. Evans -the great Bill Evans -head of the tramway company and an acknowledged power in politics. And il could to mduce us to spare his friends. That was all very well, but we had made no pledges- tTeTublS'"."" °"'^^"°"^ '" «°^ -'-5 the publc whom we served. Gardener was making himself felt and he intended to contiTu" to make himself felt. He did not intend to stultify himself, even for Graham's good "fSs '' I, of course, went along with him. rejoicing. ' He had another bill in hand (House Bill 235) to raise the tax on large foreign insurance com I THE CAT PURBS •".for 'ooney;7Xl':Tt:i^''^^^- 'o be just, and it would add «f . T^ «^°n^«led revenue to the public coffers r'^J *'""'''«» ^ 't welJ in the Senate 7n^" ^H"^'''^' ^'^^dled -directly offered a br'b^oTtloor!? "^ "^™ got it passed and reti.rj f .' ? '" "^'"P ''-he He had two X- bX '° ">« ^^-^ House. mind" provision and th!.""""^"" "anguish of the telephone c^^^^ ^^^^ « ^ii, regulating move them out of cSmrtiee Th """ ""• "^'« '« Silent but solid * opposition waa w/hXTaSL'o";ir,fr:'thV^ ^"'« *^«» on final passage -S f^ ''** """"^ calendar their tu„.rrnsidSatlV'Th?^ ^^^ ^'^^ to the top ver,. soon but ^ - ^""^ •"" *''™« next da/it wL on the Li T.'"^ ''^"'' ""<* happened more than onceTnV^ '^'- '^''^ appeared fiom thp „=i j *"'*^ '* ° 'lid not appear capable of domg anything veiy daring. Tsaw ?or it "" ^f r" f ''^«''- """ong those waiting for the Speakers signature; and - while the House was busy - 1 withdrew it from the pHe and placed .t to one side, conspicuously, so thai I could see it froK; a distance When the iLne came for signing - sure enough! -the Clerk was missing, and some bills wie missmg with him. The House was crowded- floor and galleries - and the whole place went wtch br°" "' ""'^^ "'"'""'y ^''^''^ '« know which bills w-ere gone; every member who had an anti-corporation bill thought it was hi^ that haj been stolen; and they all together broke out into denunciation, of the Speaker, the Clerk and every. 'I 42 THE BEAST •I I 1 ■ ' 1 n i ti '! body else whom they thought concerned in the outrage. One man jumped up on his chair and tried to dominate the pandemonium, shouting and waving his hands. The galleries went wild with noisy excitement. Men threatened each other with violence on the floor of the House, cursing and shaking their fists. Others rushed here and there trying to find some trace of the Clerk. The Speaker, breathless from calling for order and pounding with his gavel, had to sit down and let them rage. At last, from my place by the wall, on the out- skirts of the hubbub, I saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evi- dently frightened into an abject terror. He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin, pro- viding that cities could own their own water works and gas works; but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to the base- ment and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and it was the Senator now who had him by the neck. They thrust him back into his chair, got the confusion quieted, and with muttered threats of the penitentiary for him and everybody concerned in the affair, they got back to business again with the desperate haste of men working against time. And our jury bill was signed! It was signed; and wi had won! (At least we THE CAT PURRS 43 glare of the session's close, into an April midnight that was as wide as all eternity and as quiet I seemed to me that the stars/even in Sorado had never been brighter; they sparkled in th' A cool breeze drew down from the mountains as peace ully as the breath in sleep. It was a ni to make a man take off his hat and breathe ou his last vexation in a sigh "reatue out We had won What did it matter that the Boss the Speaker, the Clerk and so many more of fhese ishness? That spring night seemed to answer a big above ° taken to the Supreme Court, on an appeal from a damage su.t. and the judges declare^d^ i7 unci! stitutional. without any blushing apollies for a^d Garrltn?-! "rS l^*"" ^ --'''- iaure. meanwhile. w^.^l^Ld^^'^^LrS th^^ me.denu of the session and eount'^t^' no?irS"''"l^f ^"^ """ ^"d knock, scarcely noticed m the fury and heat of the fight but n^w sorely painful. Boss Graham had gten hL to imderstand, more or less plainly, that ff he infeTded to continue h.s career in politics as he had beg.^ It ^need not look for any further support froTthe Repubhcan machine in Denver. Elections cost we^a^b e to"";" ""'^ *° --« ^'^ those X were able to subscribe it; and the Republican machine could not afford to oflFend such libeiS subscribers as Mr. Evans of the tramway com pany, Mr. Field of the telephone company. X. AA THE CAT KEEPS ON PURRING 45 Cheesman of thp wot *" ».«5«- «.d u,e ^r;,Tb?.t°p^„:;:,.'""»«<» and the more Garde„r/ 1^ l"^"" *" '^"'"«tum. to me about It the Ze H T^^* °' '^ '^"'^ t«'ked He had one mot Term t''^'^^'^ ^« became. -andthenwhatP Whvtll'"'''","' '^" S^"*** ;he end of his poh'ti Ke^ 'T ^''""'="°" " *o appeal from^he BosHo thi ""^ ^ "'"'"^^ those days as to t.,r„ f ^ convention, in his shad'; Idt ^;7„«,-- to ask aid f^m assistance from the pubj! tt ^''^''' '^^ "^^ to serve? We mSt «« .. T ""^ ""^ ^^^ tried the street. fro:2decTsi::?rr'^' ""* '"'^ and called to the passers^ t„ P'""" ^""rt. the rulings of the juXT Th ' ^ ^^^ '«^^'^« over their political ^rs To thT^''''''>^^«^ the Boss as surelv «? tK \ ! convention and iudic.aHunctirt'otttTrts'^'^ ^^'^^"'^'^ t^eir M^orss -tifn ix; .?Ct "- fun of it--^t ffr%x P-l^f /- '^^ reason -but fight! We hado^.r,^''' ^°' '^''^ support us. We were nnt A I '""^ P'"'^"<^« to for our living. CcouTd'T'T' "P°" P°'"'« and keep th'e jo'^f^lS --" *'"' '^'^^''^ recreation for o^r after^ol ' "^ ' '"'' °' ii *^ THE BEAST Gardener shook his head over it. and we went abuse of the company. printed linSr *" * """'ion i" which I did not re&h find„j„pe,.. Don't wor,," G,rf,.„ ^f .hTtlp.ir. '■;^r'r'-"^"e ^ ■""i "p ndirZ"'' ^°'- ' P""**"!, "thevNl prei^ " i .^l' '' *«""' "■" "Don't nn, " he - .v.:°L™r„Ttj^'7;""*-" ^^ being .ctnp Puhhci/ Jt!p.^t:rco"^;»^>; With the very corporation that we had been attack j^g but we we., actually being com^HeTto "^fii by the jury fixmg for which we had assailedTh. Tr'T ^ ^°"''» "°' ""-ke up my lind whether this was accidental or malido^^ ^d 5 went through with the case. It endedT'al'J W- We received $500 from the tramway com! I objected to Graham that Hfinn -that we did not chTree Lon f ''"' *°° '"'"''» "But." he said with hf ^"^ '"*='' "^a^es. Helped them deLTciirr '""'^l "^°"'^« have taken a lot of the til T^ T "**'* '^°"W counsel to defend" lZ,T^^ '^'^^^'^'^'^g though I knewTtw., i ! P*^*^ ''^^ e^^planation! for it'was thei;Lj ;l:,\7'-^*r at «" - the suit. But our ,-, rv^ "^^ "^^^ ^^d won the Supreme Court Z an" ""' *^ ^ *^^*^^ »>«'°«* suit; and I eased mV ^° ^PP^*' f™™ a damage that'if the Co'rt fZ,;tr ',r '^ '^"'"^ ^-''a- as he seemed to ^p^ett wouiT-T'T^-'A' - dener intended to propose af S '""°'" *^"- constitutional ameu'dirpel^JL";!--'-. * of our law permittmg the passage B. pooh-poohed „/;t:uh."i""i::;r' '",•■'■ fools enough to nav 7i« „, xt they're -.«h,-. h/„^.x^..sr.,ri.«'7j : -h™,. more fools they' If w^V^ • '°'"'""t- The P«,Pl.. we've ^.SKTo^I, 'IS. ""1 We've got to take every cent w^ "^^^ be foolish. You're n^t ^ L^^^ed" t '''"''* Tnotht^" *'•' '"^"-^ - ""'"'o -■• ""' -^i^lSr. ^ndrS '"d '^ ""°'^- famous "Jim" Marshal? « S^"'^^"* ^^^ the «d,heve,„„.rithrszc:::s 48 THE BEAST ■f^ I' I of conspiring with a police captab to rob an express train on the Denver and Rio Grande Kailroad. In this case he was involved in a dis- pute about the lease of a gambling house; and though the city at the time, was supposed to be shut down t^hf against all gambling. Marshall assured me that this was only a political ruse to deceive the "goody-goodies." It was "on the cards to open up again very soon, and he wanted tHe liouse m readiness. I learned to like Marshall. He was a good- hearted, fearless man; and in the hands of any other system but that under which we lived, he migh have been an invaluable man to the com- munity. We became the best of friends. I learned from him all I wished to know of the con- nection between the Beast, politics and the gam- blers; and what I learned made clear to me the real meaning of the struggle that I had seen "Bro!^ i .."'t J^°"'^ B°*«l of Denver and Bloody Bridles" Waite. We won Marshall's case for him; and without waitmg for his bill, he sent us a fee of $1,000. Meanwhile, other corporation cases had been com- ^ir 7 *? ^'"^'°« '"Se fees. Gardener was jobilant. I became more and more uneasy. These people were not paying us -as I began to see - they were trying to buy us. They were usmg on us a system which they must have used on hundreds of young men in Denver, before and I THE CAT KEEPS ON PURRING 49 -unity to'obtTthe"' Tht " ''^ ^°'°- ^uy us. and they w^e sLoLrnr G^7 '" (he was?ewrrrrdri';2-°' '" '•"'^'•'- of an evening on th. 7 T "^ "P ^''^^ <^«'^. we happened! Ivt:n1S7nd" 1'"^^^' ^'"^ moment together companionable Js easy enough f« !^ I ^^ understood. R it is better to undeSn ^ ff '^^'"ent- But against,to apprTct^tt o:e"hlt^ d/f' had against him in th^ . " ,'^°«m"'g odds he to save for th^men 1^^^^? '.'°uP''^ ^^' ""^ '^-^i-asted, nr:;trif vtr^ --•• iLL"irryo;ftr£'^^f--"'« Gardener. In our Ion! ^""'^ '""^'^ '^as in attached me to him bv^rP*T""^'''P' ^' ^ad -hasfor.haris^:::--n:ShV^- *" THE BEAST to enjoy and to havA?7 f P"'""^"' '« •>« able that career and r.\ ^^ ^ ""^"^ '^« ^™'''' <>* Are .heser^^aiLVaTe^kHn^ the very qualities that make for T , T """^ a strong man in an Ton / usefulness of ^i^^?^;t:?t^^^^"--" Look at Graha^ They " ;; "''" ^^^here. "• And he has thes^^Z^Z""^'^ ''""^ to get another election L.i.- ' "*" ^ ™ e^er courts. Those SZ ItX'"^', ''"'''' ''^ ">« Graham, the JneTs iL 7 ^'^''' ''^^°"g'> juries? You HWf ■^""'^ *' '^e hunij those juvil "do ;ours" ''^^ .'r^ '° *«' wait around up^ere T^ '^'T "'^ ^"''^ ^^° kBow who's \.ho bthi!^ ^°V° ^"'y ^' •• stand in with S po Jrt tT' . ^'^l "''"' House or tic'^Tol-t^-^--^^^^^^ . THE CAT KEEPS ON PURRTMr fgauist the whole caniP a J '^""'^G 5, , or? For 'the ^f;"^" ^L' J'"" '^'> -« ^o U 1 hell with them. ^A good h^'jT P«'P'«'' To i game themselves, k^j wo„.°U^° "^ '^ '*»•' l"m on u, .^j^ cur as ^P "'' They'll r'd- And the other ha?f r"'^'^^««"'he doesn't want to know Th "^ ^^^ ""d "« 'f «e told them, n J5 ^.''°"'*^'''' ''^'-eve ^"j" i3 to make a livW L ? '"''• ^" ">ey fi;andXtSlr.^etmonVand^g:f these fellows whe;e tZ aT "j "f^ '^^. «hfw a while. We can't do Inwt u' P'*^ 'he game y/- They'll simp,;:Cfu? r'*'"'''^«''-J^ doors." '^■^ '^'^"'^'^ us out and lock the 'hat we should iVhte t^l^ T[ ''^ ^^^ h^^ haps things would turn ou L» \u ^"^' 'hat per- I was impractical, as GaTden " "l"" '''^^ ^^'^ed. «oney matters. I bad if ^T/^'^' Particularly b f «y« as a grasping lUttt;: ''^ °"' ^ ""^ ^ounge^ 'he very necessarifs onitTl:, t'""'"* '"^^^'f for P«uuy I could get T S • "^ '"'*"'''"« "P every -*J estate durtg tl De^r ^^ -vbgs b 'hen vai«„ dec^ t^^t*' '«"d boom; and -fter an ,gony of^.'td " f^^'P'^' and rr,ti ^'•'^ ' ^Xe7' itr°"' .' ^°^' '* THE BEAST a load of terror gone from my mind. With some sort of mstbctive fear of financial affair I ha"e see^iaVutas'my Znt'^:^ T^'^ "''- ' »!..> o J , . "^^""ness, to some extent, that saved me I had no more ambition to be nch. and for that reason the bribe that helped to buy Gardener did not properly tempt „.. Thad not h.s ambition to be promment in politics; the law satisfied me - as it did not him ~ and I had gone mto polit cs only to t,^ to improve the laws deteliJaTion T ^''°""' Wessiveness and aetermmation;! was content to drift along hopmg for the best. Yet this very hope was' pounded in a silent disinclination Yo drS i„" any crookedness; and as Gardener went further getting further and further away from me. There is no need to trace, step by step and incident by mcident. the misery o^f that Zdual separation. It went on for months, and Uwen on m silence. I could not speak of it. for few of facing the truth about it. Gardener was no hypocrite; that was part of his strength; Z I did not wish to hear him say the things I honed agamst. But I could not bli/k the factf for Zg They kept commg to me from other people, from friends and acquaintances outside the office; and THE CAT KEEPS ON PURRING « H>e "interests." I couM „„, *^ ^^"''^^ °f their fees. A break "^tweeTcf/" '''''^''"'S was nevitable. I had to St °'' '"'«1 »o shall n^t/'foteTL-l ? ''®'^''' "^ '^"^ 'hat I a-nsetthatZLuS'^oLr' ""^ "•"'^- «' hardener had cnS ''lL " '"°""'''''' P««ks. ;*e. f.^ then, c'aU „,« I' • tr 7/''?/ '''^^ I m goine to nlav u,„ I don't care and fherf ■:''oEl7„t f^-.J"^ Pjay ft to win - to sit in with them." Tcould '"""'' """'' I could only say that I wouli 2 /"'"" '"''"• corporation fees. °'^ "* "» more From his point of view he was r;„l,f . own point of view I I.n» '^'''' """^ my -practical to arjl'e'^; L'V''''/^^^ ""^ evidence, "all th/;!„ l. ''^ had all the and I ha/n thtVbut^a U7?' °" '"'^ «''^«' the right, a feelbf of L "^ '"""'^'^^ hope in voice, a snJnTZlZTV'''' ' '^""''^ "»» "gain the whole SS » Th ."T'' ^^^^ '° up to the mountain top ani si ^^ J''^^" ''''° kingdonis of the earth^"' t JL '"° "" '"-^ me as irrevocably as th. ^\ • , ^°"^ '''"m stn-ggledsohappV^X' " '^''"'^'^ ^^ ''^^ wath.""ir'wl^Ta'n:.— t. '^ » -'^ thing to -p^-Co^sritiiij^h; I «4 THE BEAST hope and idealism in which we had lived. It wcs leaving me with nothing but bitter memories and a failure that almost precluded hope. And yet there burned in the sky a colour of wrath that burned in me too in a hate for the men whom we had fought. Nothing was sacred to them. No one was too low for them. Laws and courts, judges and juries, politicians and gamblers, the Speaker in his Chair and the poor fallen creatures on the street— they debauched them all and bought and sold them all. And the yoi .n who had ideals, who had intellect and ambition — he, too — they must ha,ve him. They must have new tools, strong tools, to replace the ones they wore out and cast aside. They had taken Gar- dener. He had gone. If they had done nothing else, that alone would have been enough to make me swear never to forgive them, never to yield to them — to make me resolve to oppose them, to thwart them in whatever small way might be in my small power- to make me fight in any sort of forlorn hope that some time I should see "a new birth of freedom" like a clean day arising upon us, on our city, on our Capitol, on our mountains that I watched there, almost through tears, as they grew more and more sombre witn the fall of night. CHAPTER IV THE BEA8T IN THE DEMOCRACY ]yf EANWHILE I had thought I ,aw that new hadthoughtso. Ihadle.r.,;.dthatth^R ^f^""^ machine represented no.)„„, t th. Th '" porations of the city and tlu. St ,t,. ^i '""' concluded that the Dem ..; J ' ■ :' ' "''""•''"y to that machine, was oZsed ,fl > 1 "^^"'"^ of it. I knew thar"T'^ "^.■^^"; '" ^^"^ "^"«" DemocraticCl ^Zed f^t"- ^' "-> ^^e the gas company buTtS w ' '" '^^ ^^^ °' and his henchmen cid^'be'X'wd "Jf "^'^ party would be purged of all nnni ' *''* might "raise a standfrd to wiicrtr°-" ""^ "* honest might repair" TW t ^'«« «nd the backed b/ theTwer o^ a '"f > ' ^''■'"'^''••''' -.d e J an hoTsr ^IC^'l^^/^^' the^ riorr:;" ?;Xl^^ -mu../Sd::;^ serviVw f,. »v. '^ ^ • ^ volunteered mv services to the opponents of Maloney. ^ Ihey were led by Govemnr Ti, BossSpeer-RobertW w' J *" *"^ -'• opeer, who comes into u m *« THE BEAST 7L'^7lu^"'^- '** ''"y- "* ^'^ '»'«° the presi- dent of the F.,e and Police Board of Den^ . and he was recognized already as an astute pohfcan. very smooth and very' powerful He was a man nearly six feet in height, unusuallv weighty, with a round. clean-shlvenTce ^ heavy muscles -with his thin hair trained oyer h.s mcreasing baldness - his skin fresh h': S otrn "^ ""^ strong-jawed a.d firm! He had called a meetmg of Governor Thomas's fnends m h.s own re.l-estate office downtown one evenmg. and I attended, sat in a leathe; ch«.r. jomed in the discussion and was .p^^Z I UvZ ^'''°'°""-'°^"" °^ tl^e district b which InTr '"" '^t '''"'" *^'''" - " «"'y •" the ranks — and I was happy. My district was a fashionable v-arter, on Capitol H. wher. the well-to-do citizens of Denver have built their residences and theii coach houses laid out their rolled lawns and planted S tt^'^M-'* \^' ''"'''' ^^° an'ovefwhSm! wh? t?"'" t"'7'' """^ ^ *''«"g'»t I knew why. But I argued that though the rich owners of these houses were naturally of the party of the 'mterests." their servants wouid not'^necUsarHv be so; and when, in my house-to-house canvass". I wa. refused admittance at a front door I went the co„k"^K T' *"'* '""'^'^ ♦" '^' '^"-^hman. the cook, the furnace man and the servant gir female suffrage in' Colorado even 27' /^^ ''''' . ^ aJways got a much m„ "' °^ ''""Me.) » the servants' hZ^hanT'T^''^^ ^'^'^S ^^^^ I got any hearint "/ n"i " ""^ P«''our ««• 'nistress of the hoi eV^"" ^™" '^e^^ajaster or an indifferent one i 1 "'"''"^ « '^J'^'cal •^any people did not vote anT"'"'^ *° ^""^ ^"'^ -how many would repjv "v. '""^'I P™"*^ »' '"* °°« party is any better' ju^" '^^^ **«"»«« that .1' a Jot of thieves together'' ."" "'''^'^ '''^^''^ ^^ten with a "whatV^he ^s^^.'"" '"'"'^ ^^uld made me fed I ,,,, ^^^J^'^ expression that old doctor, as soon as hi K . ''*''^- ^ne curt f , slammed the do" t tl "'"' .^ '^^'^ ~ hn«h my explanations H/r '^"'^ '«« ««« to However, my work was n . ^^' °««'e-plate. party's primary, I h J/f ""' 'T'^^ted. At our say. "Good heavens, itdr- "^ ''PP""-'^ ^'U" girls in thp ^'"*^'^ys got all the ser Malon!,, n,;n''A„d"£/^^^" ' '^^^^^^^ I had the satisfaction 'of "^ "* '^^ «'«<^tions. -f "-ty in our dfsSt tS"' f'^ ^^P"^'-«n J do not intend fn • ^f ^ reduced. fails of the'TgltXeCe -tr"v;^•^ "■— !°n and the Sp^, f.^^^^" f «. Maloney fac- ---ed myself hymy::^ce:-X-^^- I* «8 THE BEAST I was elected a Speer delegate 'to the local con- vention, and 1 helped to pick candidates for the Legislature who should cast their votes for Gov- ernor Thomas as United States Senator. I became chairman of the Credential Committee in the Democratic County Convention, and was then made secretary of the delegation to the State Convention. All this gave me considerable prom- inence and a good deal of influence; but it showed me a near view of more political obliquity than I had expected to see in oor party. I found, for example, that the men with whom I was work- ing were thinking onh of the spoils of office that would accrue to them if they won. I heard one man, who was a city inspector, say: "My job's only worth $1,500 salary, but I easily make $3,000 on the side" — in graft, of course. In answer to some moral objections to the candidacy of a very corrupt and dissolute man for a place on the ticket, one of the politicians replied: "Oh, you can put any kind of yellow dog on, so long as you have a 'nice man' at the head of the ticket. They'll vote it straight. Don't worry about that." It was all "practical" politics, but it rather soiled my new hope in the people's party. I began to see that the politicians with whom I was working were not so unlike the ones with whom I had fought. What seemed to puzzle them all was the fact that I showed no ambition to be nominated for Tffl: BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY ,« = any office Th^,, •. "^"^iiACir 59. had worked^ard. DurL 1 ""' *'" *^^'"- ^ I did not go ho.e for roCeLTu'^ T'^^* Speer at a hotel and helrx^,! T. '•.^"' ''^^d with -s of oflFence ani '^e 'iTl t" '^ '"^-- incidents of a factinnpl ■ "''''^ "P 'he convention in the oZ' H^"""'u ^' '^' '-«' been a riot; revoIveHi T'' "T '^^'' '^''"-t had had to hold our i^fr""'" ■'"u"'""- ^"^' "« our hands. All th"s hT'"^. "'*'* ""' ''^- >" very friendly tolan j^l^f Ti ^"P^""'- «nd they told me thaT T ! '' '^""f^^--^ '^^ - for something from JL T^ "'""'^ ""' '" '-'^ work I had done TwP^' '" f^*"™ for the things, that I mLt irJ '''^^'''^- ^ong other office of DistricXort;" ' "'''"''''''' ^^ '^e -Sinit^e^TJSrLd';?^^^ •"-*''- er's idea that the corruo ' if u- 1" "*""'• '^f"™- -uld be checkec™rrpu:ii^''iT°PP-'l guardians of the Z w„ n ' "'^ P^^Hc duty; and it seem,d torl°"'^ '^^ *heir Attorney was one3L t^' '^^ ^'^trict -ffi-als' I sarmysl^ a'ltPr-f'"' "^ ">- of public prosecutor wihaTu"^ ""^ °^'^ prospect iave me a ecref \^"''^' ''"^ the chuckle. I soun7ed Boss tr ','"' ""^^ '"« •■nation; he said that C '^ ''''°"' "''' "»'"- already promised the p.acrLT/rry'J" si;' If I i *• THE BEAST a young politician, who., name on the ticket -It was freely said - would ensure a large campaign contribution from one of the Denver public utility corporations. I, of course, had no such support to offer, and the party needed funds. 1 said no more about the matter. But I had already spoken of it to Gardener - with whom I was still in nominal partnership - and he had jumped at the idea with an eager- ness that w-a« afterward to be explained to me. When I told hin. what Speer had said, he advised Tui*" ''tT."^. '*■ "^"^^ ^ fig^t," he coun- It can't be. I'll help." ^ I have spoken in a previous chapter of Ed Chase, ^ gambler, and of his offer to pay Gardener', first election expen.es. He was reputed to be a millionaire, and he lived then - r ^uwf "«^'-'° considerable luxury on Capitol Hill, a«d associated with the most repu- table business i»en of the community. He was greatly respected m various quarters, and he had alJ sorts of good qualities, no doubt; but he made his money out of numerous gambling hells and policy joints which he had conducted for years m Denver under both political parties; and it was understood that he was one of the three men who afterward formed the gambling "trust" of Denver. He was also a stockholder in sev- eral utility corporations, and his influence in THE BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY 61 Pol tics was well known. There w«, , «««wst gambling, of course Zl ♦ * '*'* 'nodieally enforced when n^bll^ I ""'^^ 'f"^' Hied a pretence, at leL'^S ! "^"^ '*"'- for the most part tli 'iSl Prosecution; but with the appLval of ^r u^ ^'^^ "'"' *'°»«" believe that'^Cl "^^Tce tlT l"^" ^^ keeping a "wW. .. P* business by (The/once goTutTL. >''"'■ ^""""^'^^ *-- public gamblf:* i^De!:T:. l^^""' °' ^^P^ One of Gardener's firl; ^'gument.) campaign to procure mf '°°'"'' " '"'^ ^''^'^ brmg CW tHur offit at "T""*""' ^"^ *° bim. The visit Z. "'''*^ ™^ '" to see 't -n. 1X1"^:;^"^^'" '^ ^-y '^ -'^e dental. At any rate T ^ ^" " """ *«^«. ioeular and *>ah.W" Lro;"""' °f '" '*"»* -I'ich a man who is fusicted Lr"" ^""'^' '" i« introduced to a nrn^l ?!u ^'"^ squeamish Chase was I^n elS irml'^^itr ^ ^ ,^'>-- moustache. He would nT ^'^^S^ray hair and clean "office maXtefd'o^r'^. T '^ "''*• appearance -as h/! " *'^"'*'' «"'' bis cSu. dr,good::;;^wr:;; tz -^ %t church. Hesaidlitnl r 7 ^*'*''°" °^ bis I knew tbat^S^as^atS o?;trf "^• a contributor to our can,n«;I ? f .' ^P^'' therefore, who would U^ "'^ """^ * »"*"' about the c„ndiri\t\:r:tt"^"^ -ted on our ticket. Gardener expl:ined^hrtl■ i I 68 THE BEAST account of a crusade which the "reformers" had been making against gambling. Chase was par- ticularly interested in the District Attorney's oflSce. And Gardener, as being friendly to both a prospective District Attorney and to the man whom that official would, perhaps, have to pros- ecute, went on to explaui — smiling from one to the other — that Chase did not expect to escape prosecution, that he understood his men would be hauled into court occasionally and fined the limit, and that he would not embarrass me by resenting any such grand-stand plays. "You know, Ben," Gardener said, "Mr. Chase doesn't want anything but what's fair. He doesn't expect to run wide open all the time. Whenever the District Attorney has to make a demonstration, he's willing to pay up. That's understood. You needn't feel worried about that. Need he?" Chase, it seemed to me, was a little embar- rassed. He stroked his moustache, rubbed his chin, nodded when he was appealed to, and relieved his gravity with a half-reluctant smile. I listened, and kept my thoughts to myself. "They don't want you to do anything crooked, Ben," Gardener laughed. "All they want is fair play. You know gambling can't be stopped as long as men want to gamble. You can handle the thing in a practical way. They'll be reasonable. You needn't be afraid of offending your friends." 63 made THE BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY ♦ I replied, at last, that my nomination w settled upon, at all - that I had not even up my own mind about it yet. And I backed out of the mterview, at the first opportunity, as unos- tentatiously as I could. I understood that Gardener, being now very Ultimate with Chase, wished to get him to throw bis influ«sice for my nomination. A few min- utes laten I understood why he was so eager. When Chase had gone. Gardener came to mv room ,n the office, in high feather. Why' with me as DBtrict Attorney and himself as counsel for the gamblers, we could make $25,000 a year outside my salary -without the slightest danger of becommg "inrolred" -and at the same tfaie gam all the credit from the community of enforc- mg the law and prosecuting the gamblers. No doubt of It. The game had been played in this way, in Denver, before. I understood the uselessness of arguing with these men. If I replied that I was not in politics for my pocket" and wished to do what was straight, they would only give me credit for bemg either less honest than they were - since 1 added hypocrisy to guilt - or of bemg an impractical "goody-goody" who had no busi- ness m politics. I had learned, too, the value of keeping my own counsel, if I was to get any of the reforms I wished from the very "prac- ticai men whom conditions had put in power •* THE BEAST So I simply lold Gankner that I was not Dig- trict Attorney, and b»d no prospect of beiag. I got away from him - feelmg rather sick at heart — and dismissed the matter fh)«i my mind with relief. "1 didn't understand you, Ben,"' he told me long after. "And I don't believe you unde -od yourself." Pertiaps not. I was not trying to understand »;.seif. I was trying to fand : y way through the jungle into which I nad walked so gailv. One thing was ^>eii*in: I could not maintain even a nominal partnership with Gardener any longer. I should either have to start out in law for myself or take a political office. Boss Speer when next I met him, said: "Ben. you've got some strong backing for District Attorney. Chase has been *p to see me. He says he's jor you'" I accepted the honour of his support — resolved that k I ever got the office I should play the deuce with some of the gentlemen who had put me m it — but I imagine, from what I have learned since, that all this "strong backing- came from Gardener. Governor Thomas, shortly after, assured me that the nomination had been irrevocably promised to Harry A. Lindsley (who was elected), and I let the matter drop, (har- dener said to me, years later, when he had become leadmg counsel for the head of the gamblers' syndicate: "Chase was saying, only the other day, what a narrow escajw we had when we THE BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY 65 picked you for Districl Atlomey. He said v„«'^ have rawed hell with us. sure" And T i r up at th. caucus C U , '*"" '^*" "***« to'u.e thatTe Denv r ar;^"r"' ^^P"""«^ and the Denver Union W^ercZ""^ ^""'"'"^ Peter L. Palmer a, „ "^"'«' C°'"P«ny favoured backed ,-Z^S:Z pVret/: it^"'^^' '^' contribution; and I wasTnnnJ ^- '^'»™P»'gn good of the part." On he ?,T;k ^°' "'^ nages and automobL lohrb^/tn^ ™'" incredible, I know thit in I^T^ ""'^^ '^"^ tuat in later campaigns it 66 THE BEAST 1. i I! amounted to S^.'J.OOO for the city alone; and thia item of cost formed only a small portion of the whole expense, even in the city. I helped to select the members of our finance committee, who had to raise the funds for the campaign ; and I learned that these men were selected because of their connection with wealthy corporations. Our chairman, Milton Smith, for example, was attorney for the telephone company and — at times — for the gas company, the brewers, the gamblers and all the rest of that ring. Several other members of the committee were similarly connected. But then, it was pointed out, the director and chief organizer of the Republican campaign, was "Big Steve"! There was much voluble concern as to which campaign committee would get the largest con- tributions; and it began to dawn upon me that instead of being a contest of parties, the election was going to be a contest of corporations, through their paid agents, for the control of the machin- ery of government. The "workers" in the ranks of the fight were working for nothing, apparently, but the promise of this or that picayune "job" under the politicians. The politicians were strug- gling for nothing, apparently, but the offices and the graft to which they hoped to be elected. The corpomtions, over them all, were apparently using them all to keep themselves above the laws by owning the sources and the agents of the law. Tire BEAST IN THE DEMOCILVCY And the people? The "dear people"? In 67 thp nr,Vo. ' ■"■" ."""l^"P'e f in none of the pnva e conversations or .secret caucuses of the pol,t,c.an,,. do I rememhcr hearinrihe had yet to induce to buy stock. " That, at least, was the situation as I look back upon ,t now - as a man having strugded ?hr„„rJ a b.t of tangled underwood. .'.ks"b^l' '^rj from a clearmg on a rise of ground. At thftlme I could not see the forest for the trees. I ^w the r- "I ""/'"^'' P"^'^^'"'^ ^he election. buT the struggles of one „r another organiza.im. To obtain some partisan advantage by getting h! or that party Judge and his cfurt 'to'g^^'them an unfair ballot, to complicate it by puttinruo tickets- with misleading designations and ^o confuse the unfriendly voter in so'^e way orotheJ for the party's iM-nefit. I saw the iudires on fh bench called into political conferenc^n pH,! whTV f"'*^ ""^•^ '•^^^■^ - advlnce.'^ And Dont be too squea.n.sh. young man. This IS the way the game is played." At first it seemed that our party would win both state and county elections.^Tt as S IZ approached we heard that one band of corporZ Wall Street affiliations - wa^ determined that tl MKaocorr ksoiution nst chaut (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) \m iiiiii ii ^ APPLIED IVMBE U M-W 16^ J Eait Mam Slmt -^5 BocfiMter, New York U609 US^ ^E (^'6) *63 - 0-00 - Phone ^£ ("6) 288-5989 -Fa. I 68 THE BEAST the Republicans should carry the county. Money began to flow victoriously from the Republican headquarters. Our finance committeemen began to wail that some of the corporations that had promised contributions now refused them. It was as if an army had been deserted, not by its leaders, but by the very government that supplied its pay chest! The United States Marshal, bemg a Republican official, began to swear in a little army of deputy marshals, composed of all sorts of thugs and Negro rowdies, to do "police duty" at the polls. The Fire and Police Board, being Democratic, swore in special policemen to oppose them; but, on account of the deficit in the pay- roll, the Board could not compete on equal terms with the Marshal. Then the Democratic organ- ization appealed to the courts, and the Marshal was enjoined by law from interfering with the election. But the Republicans still had the money. They went to the Democratic Sheriff of the coimty and bought his office for three days for $20,000 — according to the confession after- ward made — and swore in their outlawed deputy marshals as deputy sheriffs. Thus the Democrats — or rather, the corporations behind them — had the police and the city jail to aid them at the polls; and the Republicans — or the corporations whom they represented — had the Sheriff and the county jail. And the stage was set for riot and murder. THE BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY 60 Riot and murder came, with the opening of the polls. I had been at work all night -b charge of Democratic headquarters during th^ Illness o our chairman -and I had Iain Vv^ in my clothes, exhausted, toward daybreak^ was awakened to receive a telephone report ;T"^^,°' "'" watchers, that there was going to be hell to pay at Twenty-second and Larimer » ^^ Ihese cursed nigger deputy sheriffs." he said are buttmg in here. Our men won't stand for it' It means a shootmg. Some one had better hustle down from headquarters and try to settle it " I hurried downstairs (our headquarters were in the Brown Palace Hotel), called a cab. and ordered the driver to get me to Twenty-second and Larimer as quickly as he could. The streets were quiet and empty in the dingy light of a cold November mommg. and we clattered down Eigh- teenth Street at a noisy gallop. We swung i^to Larimer Street, m front of the Windsor Hotel - the very hotel that at my first arrival in Denver had seemed so high and so magnificent !- and we had httle more than passed it when the driver pulled up with a suddenness that almost shot me from my seat. I flung open the cab door and thrust out my head to see what was the mat- ter. The street was full of excited people who seemed to be scurrying this way and that; and over their heads there hung a thin cloud of smoke, very still m the dead air. As I jumped out and «'! i^ 70 THE BEAST ran toward the polling place, I saw a policeman lying behind a telegraph pole, in a quivering huddle, writhing painfully; a Negro sprawled in blood in the gutter; a little knot of men were supportmg a wounded man to a drugstore; the gongs of ambulance and patrol wagons sounded their warnings from a distance; and while men came running up, as I ran, to see what had hap- pened, others quietly made off down the street. I went over to the Negro. The murder that had been bought and paid for, lay at my feet. His mute eyes were wide open; a puzzled frown puckered his black forehead that was wrinkled like an ape's. He lay there — the broken tool of those same criminals that had used the Clerk of the House whom I had seen bleeding m the Capitol — flung aside now m the gutter, dead, but with this sort of dumb question staring at me from his poor, bestial, bewildered face. The physical revulsion of the sight nauseated me. When a man touched me on the shoulder I started, with a shudder, as if I had been the author of that horror myself. "They began it," he said. They had, indeed, begun it, as I found out when I followed the police and their prisoners to the City Hall station, and got a confession from the Negroes there. And in my indignation against the Republican machine, I accused the Republicans to the reporters, and gloated over f:i I ■ t THE BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY 71 ttn^ I»K the cnnie on the Republicans who had sent those irresponsible Negroes to the poFls begun It? Or had it been begun by the men who gave the money to hire them - the headTof the warring corporations who were determined to w„ that election at the muzzle of the evX ' •f need be, so that they might be the owners of the hung Junes the paid speakers, the venal derks the unjust judges, the free gamblers and aH the vice and graft that should keep tkem in pollS Yes. The men who had ruined young Gardener had shed that blood. The question o^ the dead face of that miserable creature in the gutter was theirs to answer. And some day. sf^ewhere somehow, they shall answer ~ let us hope. Ihat was my experience in the election of 1900 Those were the lessons I lear ' from it. Those left S'tlTT?'""*'"'"^"^--''-" have left t^ the last because it was a lessen of hope, and because m spite of all. it seems to me there is still ground for hope. This was it: nTv ^ ' Roosevelt, then Governor of New York, came to Denver, and he was challenged the %°^"T ^^"""^^ *" ^^^^"^ '''« position^f the Republican party upon certain issues of the contest. Colorado was a free-silver state, almost :r! i( h! 72 THE BEAST If liii. unanimously, and the game was to make Roose- velt either embarrass his party or himself by forc- ing him to handle the free-silver question before an audience that would resent the opinions of an Eastern "gold-bug" however mildly he might put them. The Opera House wa- packed with people. Senator Lodge, of Massac ..setts, held their atten- tion for a time, but they were impatient to hear "Teddy." He was late. He had not arrived yet. Expectation became noisy, restless, inimical. Presently we heard the low grumble of a crowd shouting in the street. The word was cried about that he was coming. And almost immediately, b a crash of music from the band, he strode down to the footlights and faced the shouting audience. He looked tired. But without waiting for silence, with his head down as if he were about to charge, he bared his teeth and uttered some- thing unintelligible, in a hoarse voice. The audi- ence roared. He took a long breath, watching them, dogged, determined, filling his lungs; and then — with a sudden gesture that compelled silence — he screamed at them, with all his teeth showing: " We— stand —on a— ^oZd- platform!" It came to them like a blow in the face; and before they could take voice, he added, pound- ing out the words with his fist: "We stand for the same thing in Colorado that we stand for in New York!" m THE BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY 73 toS^S °" ^"^^"- "^^^ ^*'°"* «^ «PP'-"«e that followed came m a roar of delight from a thou- sand throats. They cheered him as if L had sa.d the one thing .hey had been waiting to het mstead o the very thing that no Republican ^Ijhcan m Denver would have dared to^wh pe^ to any smgle one of them, in the dark, behind a locked door They cheered him as if Z would spht their throats. A startled DemZ crat,c politician who stood near me cried: "Gr^at ZIT: A^T'^ converted this crowd to the gold standard, has he?" (The wisdom of poH? hcians!) They cheered his courage, his trmh h.s defiance of political hedging, hif Lonesty^' inanhness. It was the cheer of pride, of lov^ of admiration. It was the voice of o^r peopfe ^'teti^Tho;:.*™''*"^"'^^- ''--'^ I went home, that night, resolved never to for- get the lesson. Often since, when I have faced he hoot of prejudiced opposition from my own small stage m public life. I have rememberld my throat for another defiance. For I believe m that way. with our people, there is hope itj: i if • ■I' I I U 'I nil u iMi' '■ ■ k CHAPTER V THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT WELL, the Democrats carried the county and the state in November, 1900, aid our "people's party" was put m power; but I no longer had any of the illusions with which I had volunteered in the battle. I had found that most of my companipns in the straggle were not patriots but hired mercenaries, fighting — as our opponents fought — under the black flag of cor- poration pirates. I had as much hope of get- ting my reform laws passed by the machine " bosses " as a man might have of getting a city charter for a South American town from a party of buccan- eers who had taken th« place for pillage. I had drawn up our threatened constitutional amend- ment for Gardener, but I knew he would never fight for it; and, of course, he never did. I was at a standstill, helpless, and not merely discouraged but convinced that there was nothing I could do. While I was in this state of mind, I was offered, as a "political reward," the oflSoe of Judge of the County Court, to succeed Judge R. W. Steele, who had been elected to the Supreme Court and had left the county bench empty. Under ihe 74 THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT 75 one of the heads of t),» i £ . """^ "'"n "illee ^,3 . "'^ ^•"'■""lio E,e™,|„ Com. is.'^r £-•--»-= af^: j^ X snail nere content mvsplf nrJn, j and Dersonnl .■„«., "^ '*"s polit cal «"u personal influence on my behalf th^ n ^-s of a discontinued showrrti" Sn' It h« been • Wblarted" since thi, w« written. if 76 THE BEAST the pinnacle of the building's dome there stands the inevitable emblematical figure of Justice, but it has been twice struck by lightning — equally emblematically, no doubt!— so that Justice has lost not only her scale= but the arm ;hat upheld them. Here, b the usual dingy court room, with the usual drone of court officials and the usual forensic eloquence of counsel addressing the usual yawns of bored juries, the county court was held. It was then — as it is, now — the busiest court in the state. It had jurisdiction to try eLction contests and such political lawsuits; it had a varied and general jurisdiction in civil cases in which property to the value of not more than $2,000 was involved — for which reason it was called "the poor man's" and "the people's" court; it was the court of appeal from police magistrates and justices of the peace; it had criminal jurisdiction in all "misdemeanours" and in "felonies" where the accused was under twenty- one years of age; and in addition, it was the pro- bate court for the city and the county. I was just thirty years of age when I took charge of it. I knew that Judge Steele, whom I succeeded, was an upright and just judge, on ^hom no party and no corporatitn had had any "strings." And in taking his place on the bench, I saw myself ris- ing above all the political sculduggery through which I had been struggling so long— to look down on it untempted, with a judge's honour Beard of County Comm; . °"'*''' "'hom the appoint to office^b"';;::;"?/'-^''^'^ ™^ "> succeed skilled clerics VhTu\, T ^ e*Pef.ed to vice of the court ft tJn and fif^" '" "'^ ^ thej; had no qualificaS„s tr lu''" T"' ""'^ wished to fill. Thev«!«; !i ."'^ P''*''" "»ey '••cans did it " thaf '^ "' "''" "''»« «epub- and that if iloSi,"^ ^"'j '^"l"'-^ H of'lne. --t be lo/a. nt" W^^n' tf" '':, "'^ ^'^''^ ^ single clerk "walk the Zk » th'- ■'', ""''^ •* was amazinjf. Mv tZJ^ ^' ...^^"" 'ndignation -e that I nfed 2 ™ a rL ^"'"^'' ^"^'^^ bench; and the worker „ «n«°»nation to the got a reno.inati:nt:; r,d'.SV'^' ' ' ^^^' -Oils. When I pointed „T,rfW .^^^ me at the be run efficientlvTnThr- / ' '*"" *=°"' '^'^^ 'o ^hey replied: " y';u , tdtrtt t ''^ "^"P'^' ven.on.how«uchthepeopre 'art''' next con- Inen Mr. Pr«) p nr :. came to me with - ^ ■ ™^ "'*' '^^ce, «««. „, Ob t.Lnrhi 'J" ' •'"'■'■' J J ■^8 THE BEAST would see that I had the proper reward for my «.grat.tude (I had to appoint him. later, in one case, m which the litigants demanded it.) And finally, a layer-politician - an old friend whom I have not the heart to name - arrived with an mcredible proposition that I should use my power M judge to have him appointed - whereve^pos- sible- guardian, administrator or referee, as the case might require, in the suits that should come before me; and he in return would divide his fees with me (He has been my consistent enemy in the legislature ever since my refusal to enter into mat abominable conspiracy with him.) It was with a saddened pride, at last, that I took my place on the bench. I had dropped my part- nership with Senator Gardener. I hVd only nine months of office before me. And already my party had turned against me and my prospects of any future as a judge were as blank as despair However, the mills of Justice began i, rind- and I was there to see that everything in the /aopper passed truly between the stones. Sitting behind a desk that looked as if it had been desi«,ed as a wooden sepulchre, I acted as public umpire in will ca^es that mvolved interminable petty family quar- rels, or in real-estate cases where one long file of Witnesses swore to the falseness of the testimony of another file equally long, or in divorce pro- ceedings f,,r non-support, tiresomely formal and undefended usually (probably because they had THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT ,o «>een prearraneed) or „ • . . ^"URT 79 deputes Ut^S\ZlZd\ ."^ """^ '^^•'>"'<=ai ">d creditors, pur h^l '^nd''^ ''""""'• '^''^♦°" the tria/s were PytThZl "*'"'" * '""^ «' a judicial autoiat'on'Tn' a Xt ' I^ "? "°'«' '^"^ decision according to tL « '^- ^^'^ *° «'^« «>y Many of the c«.2 m-ot ,^"*^'"«^ '^ »'»« J"/ vaiue that it ^o,Z ZtythJT''', f - ''ttle sioned lawyers employed ?J S,n ? ■?' ''"" *''"P"- «d these cases draZd al T'T """*'"'">= J'ke a man tied to a chair "T *^T' "" ^ f«" forever to "a ta'e "old hv ? ■^■"P*""'^ *° '^t^n and fury, signifyin^tth'^" "''''' ^"" »' --d 'hi oXt"arrt;'?/\^''"'' -•- 'd Judge iistened^o'^^JLecita ofir r"' "'"' "'^'^'' ^^ -re arraigned So!:! ^^ ^^-a^;^ tragedies that •nortahty and as indifferenTas fate T ''T ''''°"* now. that it was probablv h ^ understood, young, as the judL of „ ^ ""'^ ^^ ^^'^ hegun ^'owl^oredtrdtl^ItLT'' ""''' ""' ^Sn ». for d^ftolTo^fV'- ' '-' "-^ ««t- »>«' "ghtl/ it co;ce™e^th?""~u'f ' '•^"-^^ °>nsty old mortgaged Ln,> ""^""T^'P °' ^"'"e stored in a warehouse InH ' '^' '"^'^ ''-^ mortgagee on thtlVg^ "r^^dlri? '^ ''' houseman on a storage lief Tv. 7 •'''^ ^'«'«- trict Attorney interrunW Ti,~ ^^^i^taut Dis. 'ne if I would n Zose o/aT"''"^ *° -^^ uispose of a larceny case that If; 80 THE BEAST Hi i lit would not take two minutes. I was willing. He brought in a boy, whom I shall call "Tony Cos- tello,"* and arraigned him before the court. The Clerk read the indictment; a railroad detective gave his testimony; the boy was accused of steal- ing coal from the tracks, and he had no defence. Frightened and silent, he stood looking from me to the jury, from the jury to the attorney, and from the attorney back to me — big-eyed and trembling — a helpless infant, trying to follow in our faces what was going on. The case was clear. There was nothing for me to do under the law but to find him guilty and sentence him to a term in the State Reform School. I did it — and prepared to go back to the affair of the second-hand fur- niture. There had been sitting at the back of the court- room an old woman with a shawl on her head, huddled up like a squaw, wooden-faced, and incredibly wrinkled. She waddled down the aisle toward the bench, while papers of commitment were being made out against the boy, and began to talk to the court interpreter in an excited gabble which I did not understand. I signed to the coun- .'jpI for the warehouseman to proceed with his Ci. ,; he rose — and he was greeted with the most soul-piercing scream of agony that I ever heard This name, and those of all other chfldren brought before the court, are disguised in order to protect the families from the consequences of publicity. THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT 81 noiy. bhe threw her hands im f„ u l . grasped her poor, thin grl^'U and^pl^He'dt' vvnen tne baihff of the court caught hold of her to take her from the roon>, she broke awly from him door I could still hear her shriekin/ i. • , • terribi,. I adjourned the cfur^^tnT ^^t^^^^^ Z f^'t^'^'ry -uch shaken and^nntveJ but I st.n heard her. in the hall, wailing andlt' heart was being torn out of her. I did not know what to do. I thoujrhf T l,„j requbed thati !',> "^^ ^"^y- ^he law required that I should sentence him. The mother mjght .ream her.elf dumb, but I was una'jf to' .,?^\^T^T^ ^"^ ^"e*'^- Two reporters attracted by the uproar, came to a.k me Jl c^u j' not do somethmg for her. I telephoned the Di change my order against the boy -make it a 82 THE BEAST fli- 1 f f" suspended sentence — and let me look into the case myself. He was doubtful — as I was — about my right to do such a thing, but I accepted the responsibility of the act and he consented to It. After what seemed an hour to me — during which I could still hear the miserable woman wail- ing — the boy was returned to her and she was quieted. Then I took the first step toward the founding of the Juvenile Court of Denver. I got an offi- cer who knew Tony, and I went with him, at night, to the boy's home in the Italian quarter of North Denver. I need not describe the miser- able conditions in which I found the Costellos living — in two rooms, in a filthy shack, with the father sick in bed. and the whole family struggling agamst starvation. I talked with Tony, and found him not a criminal, not a bad boy but merely a boy. He had seen that his father and his mother and the baby were suffering from cold and he had brought home fuel from the railroad tracks to keep them warm. I gave him a little lecture on the necessity of obeying the laws, and put him "on probation." The mother kissed my hands. The neighbours came in to salute me and to rejoice with the Costellos. I left them. But I carried away with me what must have been something of their view of my court and my absurd handling of their boy; and I began to thmk over this business of punishing infants THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT 83 i.~vr p,„j, J ""«'" »' "-' ■»» !•«. ..d n „ iL ''** same man into the barn if w T '"""S*^" ^'^ ^°"°^ cuuer naa my companions. But I '■JM 84 THE BEAST "burglary" ? It had been mere mischief, an adven- ture, a boy's way of plagueing old Fay whom we considered the "grouchy" enemy of all boys. "I don't think these children should be charged with burglary," I said to the Clerk, rather shame- facedly. "Bring them into my chambers." They came, and I confronted in their small per- sons the innocent crimes of my own "kid" days. They told me all about their " burglary," their feud with Fay — whom two of the boys accused of having taken their pigeons — and their boyish in- dignation against him for having called in the cops in the quarrel. I lectured them— as self-righteously as I could underthecircumstances— and discharged them on suspended sentence, with a warning. I went to the Clerk of the Court, Mr. Hubert L. Shattuck. "This is all wrong," I said. "It's all nonsense — bringing these children in here on criminal charges — to be punished — sentenced to prison — degraded for life!" "Well, Judge," he explained, "we sometimes get short on our fee accounts, and it helps to increase fees in this office to bring the kids here." It did. The officers of the court were paid so much for each conviction obtained by the court. They received no regular salaries. When they wished to make up arrears of pay, they rounded up a batch of youngsters and " put them through." The same thing was done in the police court, th- ,ourt of the justice of the peace, and the criminal court. THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT 85 It was more than absurd, more than wrong It was an outrage against childhood, against society against justice, decency and common sense I began to search the statutes for the laws inthe matter to frequent the jails in order to see how the children were treated there, to compile stat- stics of the cost to the county of these trials and the cost to society of this way of making criminals of little children. And the deeper I went into the matter, the more astounded I became Jhl't^ ^7' ".'''* "'y J*"' '"" «=«"" reeking with filth and crawlmg with vermin, waiting trial for some such infantile offences as these I have described. I found boys in the county jail locked up with men of the vilest immorality, listening to obscene stories, subject U the most degrading personal mdignities. and takbg lessons in a high school of vice with all the receptive eagerness of almost confirmed m viciousness. had begun their careers as Tony Costello had. or these burglars of the pigeon roost. And I found that many of ^e hardened criminals were merely the perfect graduates of the system of which I had been a sort of proud superintendent. It kept me awake at night. It possessed me with a remorseful horror. I went about talking. agitatmg, mvestigating. pestering the jailer!. spendmg my Sundays in the cells among the crimi inals. trymg to draft reform laws and in every T i,l! II ! M THE BEAST way making myself a nuisance to everybody I put into this work all the balked enthusiasm that my unsuccessful legislative reforms had left me I could help the children, if I could not help the grown-ups." Some of these "grown-ups," whom my activi- ties annoyed, began to say I was "crazy." Our family physician came, on that report, to remon- -.trate with me. A relative, very much alarmed, asked me to be careful of myself, not to "overdo " And I felt as if I were standing before a burnine buildmg. with children crying for help in the flames at the upper windows, while my friends remonstrated: "Be calm. Don't excite yourself so. People will thmk you're not sane!" Not sane? Well it depends on what you con- sider sane." One very sane thing to do would have been to turn my back on the fire and the children perishing in it, blame the inefficiency of " w n ?fP*'"'™«°'' sJiJ^g a shoulder as if to say: Well, It s none of my business," and go home to my dinner. I know that sort of sanity. I have seen it, many times, myself. But in the transports of my so-called insanity I found a sec- tion of the Colorado school law of April 12, 1899 by means of which I could get a ladder 'up to those doomed children. And this was it: „„r®»''*? \ f^'^'y ^^""^ ... who does not attend school ... or who is in atterd- ance at any school and is vicious, incorrigible or THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT 87 wanders about the streels-'in the nighT Ume ^ tsuhLfr^h " ^"^'^*'' disorderly person and De subject to the provisions of this actf"' l„"hi"''^"-l'!J'°''^!''y P^"'""' Not a criminal to be pumshed under the criminal law. but a ward of the state, to be corrected by the state as only for the disciphnmg of school children; but it could be construed as I proceeded to conslrue i stah,T " * «tf ' fire^^cape built according to the statutory regulations. It was merely a wooden adder rotting in a back yard. But it iould reacS the lower stones - and I asked the District Attor- ney m future to file all his complaints against chil form which I furnished - and he agreed to do so. Thus our juvenile court" was begun informally, anonymously, so to speak, but effectually. It was as far as I knew the first juvenile court in America' and the simple beginnmg of a reform thai has since gone round the world.* n, ^\nf "'" '° ^^°^^^ '°"^ ^ys'^"" of handling the ch,,dren. We needed, above all. probatiof officers; and - proceeding still under the school iuv'S;rrj^rs;SL^:^^r'ut?z" °' ?"^"^ '""-"«' "■' «- 'I; if m fi til) t ! E I 88 THE BEAST law -I went to all the school boards, askbg for the appomtment of truant oflScers whom I could use in the court. I addressed meetings of school- teachers, harangued women's clubs, Christian asso- ciations, charitable societies and church meetbes bormg people with "the problem of the children"' wherever I could get leave to speak. All this slowly aroused a public enthusiasm that was to become in time very powerful; it attracted atten- tion to the court and helped me with the parents of demquent children. It brought in subscrip- lions from public-spirited men and women to help on the good work." It prepared for the passag^ of the necessary laws which I was drafting for the next session of the Legislature. And it led me finally, as you shall see. into another collision with tiie Beast. Meanwhile, however, a more imminent collision was impending. A reform movement had been started in Den- ver agamst the liquor "dives." or "wine rooms." as they were called. There was a law on the stat- ute books forbiddmg saloons to serve liquor to women, but a great part of the trade of the dives was done with prostitutes, and all the places were fitted up with "cribs" and "private rooms" where young girls could be drugged and ruined and the white-slave traffic promoted. The wine-room keepers were backed, of course, by the political power of the brewers, and the inmates were used THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT 89 aiabsllh.'" • ' ^^^"^ ^^^ '^^°™ movement against the wine-room evl" becam.. «« ^o„ ously strong that the membersSThe F.t Sd t^ e'l "It ''''' '^^y -""'-i either have to enforce the law or involve the n»n,„« •• ffi^r r r '^^ ''^'•'' ^ ^- 'L^erameJ Cronm was put forward in an appeal to the court ; M^ntmVrh''^ p-'r- «^ ^- ^'^""e3 oy Miiton Simth. who was chairman of our Demo- c^t^'nf"'' ^r'™' Committee. From I pr"se h^ ,.»V/°'''' ""agistrate's court. Cronirwas brought before District Judge Pete L. Palmer whose record needs no remaric. And Judge Pat mer promptly granted an injunction restfaininl he magistrate and the Fire and Pol ce b3 bron'Tnel"'- '^'°"^" -^--'^^'•g's dS roL^ " "*"' argument that the "wine- room law ' was an infringement of the conSn lonal rights of women. Ihe ministers who cen-" with threats of fines for contempt of court. Cronin ZT ^*^i!^^'« dive; the Fire and Police Board was rescued from an awkward position- ani ?he how man^Tf'r^ " '^' '^''' ''^^^^^ I had seen how many of the young girls brought before me had been ruined m wine rooms. I hid jurisdiction • it i \ i 1, s 'a ^ THE BEAST in the case because my court was the court of leTn Z '^" "^r '«"«•« '^ourt in which the test proceedings against Cronin had been begun. And I went out of my way to bring some frieSly gel him to file an appeal in my court. He did it; and before the case was called I was visited m my chambers by another member of I" Democratic County Executive Committee, who was also an agent for the brewers' trust. He w»hed to speak to me about the Cronin matter. You know Judge." he said, "there's a liberal element m this town that controls about 10.000 ne r'th ;\"^r' ''"" '" ''•'^ ^-"— bus" JanMn^ ..>?'' T "'"^ '^' Republicans this fall, and well lose the elections. I know you're a good Democrat the same as I am. and I know you don t want to put the party in a hole. I'm faterested m ycu. I want to see you succeed. I want to see you renominated and reelected, and I know yoM can't do it with this liberal element agamst you Can you? Well. now. Judge pll! mer has fixed th.s Cronin case all right. You can W .t with him. as it stands, and no on""; say a word agamst you. It's up to him. If there's any kick from the church people, it's coming to him. Let ;itm take it." And so on. It was the frame ancient mixture of smiles and threats, of promised favours -f I "played the game." and of political destruction prophesied if I refused. I THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COURT »1 my poi tical welfare, and got rid of him. The law in the Cronin case was .enr a -unity. ,„d,, ,3 power .haTthe r^h't was an exercise of the police power I so hpM ' 0?rh?^n^;i7£rwrt5^erX"c^^^^^^^^ ="^:^^'^r^el?dS "rd .• on Tw " '' rr ^' -'^^ '^^"-^ «"/ aecision. It was as if he said: "Whv T thought this was only a stall! Where's you^p'ul w h th,s court? What sort of mess arT S fellows trying to get me into ?" ^°" to?e"JSt"Zie''^"?^ut^^^^^^^^^ politicians told me "If ;„„ 5 '«/°°e." the ^ion. you... he s^rLhedV^rScS ^^^a- era! element. Sure as shooting!" ''^ ""^ "'" M THE BEAST of the Beast, and I went back to my work for the children so as to establish at least a precedent or procedure for my successor to follow. But that work, and my decision in the Cronin case, had brought me to the notice of the "troublesome church element.' It would have been poor poli- lies to stand against the sweep of the reform wave in an attempt to prevent my renomination. So I was allowed a place on the Democratic ticket agam. and the System prepared quietly to "knife" me and elect my Republican opponent. ^^ At that time I was squeamish about iudites p aymg politics.' and I decided that I should make no speeches and take no active part in the campaign. I had been assessed $1,000 by the finance committee as my contribution to the cam- paigti fund, and an officer of the First National Bank of Denver (in which the court funds were deposited) offered to pay the assessment for mt I was no longer as innocent as I had been in the days of Gardener's first nomination, and I refused the offer and paid the money fro.j my own purse. But It took all I had; I had nothing lelt even to pay for the printmg of a circular letter to the elec- torate, and I allowed some lawyer friends to pay for that publication — a mistake which I have never made since. As election day approached it bt-iame appar- ent to every politician that I was hopelessly "out of the running." My Republican opponent was THE BEAST IN THE COUNTY COUIIT 93 »e» openly «o,ki„g !?„« ^t u". ' H""' ov" .he .«„.,„„ „,„,,,'■? ti*r r..'TS no. He .h.do«. of . eh.„eei and I „.„. ,' f.!; 5»ij. »j,ee,™ M,h>. „,,k„, „,r,:^',r;,:; L .he?"' ''5? ".""''">'■• "» -".S !,:?„: ZZ T" J"? "!■ ™"8 ""> hon,c./„„„ -eXrSLtrr-tri ^* THE BEAST of renewed faith in the people, the first sign of an aroused pubhc opinion on which I might rely he resurrection call to all my dead hopes of reform^ It was as if there had come-Lt of blind darkness -with the flash of a stroke of hghtn.ng-the fuH day! The people were with ZJt ^5"""° '^'. ^'°^^'' ^^P"*^^^". the paper that had opposed me, later conceded that "Lind- sey was honestly elected" - "o„e officer who did not owe his advancement to illegal votes" - endorsed by "honest Democratic and Republi- as a boy gulps his emotion, with a pain in the Jr?' ^''^J broken, the System. I had sent its 1 '"^^^^'t^'' limping, with its tail between (Or rather. I thought I had.) As I walked down to my court that morning, the streets looked cleaner, the air seemed purer, life seemed more for me and thousands of good citizens were wait- ing to help me with it. CHAPTER vr THE BEiOT mo THE CBIU>»EN itate°tn",'7"»^^'*' -P'-'^^'-n. but avid .s no here ^^ ^^ .^^^ ^P^ cTetSs oTou'"s Lig^: ne collection of fees tor prosecuting children, w ^^ THE BEAST Above all we needed "contributory juvenile delinquency" laws so that we might be able to prosecute parents for neglecting their children, and dive keepers, gamblers and such for tempting and seducmg children; we needed laws establish- ing a juvenile court to which all children should be brought, mstead of having them arraigned in the magistrate's court, the county court or the criminal court, haphazard; we had to obtam. for this juvenile court, probation officers with police powers s„ that we might arrest the wine-room keepers and such, whom the police, for political reasons, were protecting; we needed a detention school, so that children might no longer be put in jail; we had to strengthen the child-labour law and the compulsory school law; we needed trade schools, public playgrounds and public baths. But the Legislature was not to meet for twelve months and I knew that before we could obtain any of these laws we must arouse a public demand for them My work during 1902 was all schemed out o that end. And since the evils that we attacked are common to all our American cities. I wish to give the story of our fight in some detail. Ihose politicians in Denver who love darkness and gum shoes are never tired of screaming from their burrows that I am a " grand-stander " This IS to them an epithet of opprobrium, you under- stand. They apply it to Roosevelt. La Follette. Folk. Jerome. Hughes and every other politician THE BEAST AND THE CIHLDREN 97 who has raised the window and shouted "Bur- g ars! when he heard the centre-bit in the night It was m the year 1902 that I was first branded a grand-stander." Ineffaceable stigma! I an- pealed to the people to help me obtain laws for the people. I even did that! I appealed to them directly and indirectly, from the platform whenever I could get any of them before a platform, and through the newspapers whenever a reporter gave me an interview or an editor a. jwed me a column for an article. And pursumg the same pol.cy I even used my place ui the county court to arouse public opinion, and did It with a sensational" denunciation that was flagrant "grand-standing" of the most delib- erate sort. It happened in this way: I found on my return to the bench that the law against the wine rooms was not bemg enforced. I found that the gambling hells were all open. I made the rounds of tL- m at n,ght, unrecognized, and saw boys in knicker- bockers at tables evidently reserved for their use I saw mdescribable things ir .e wine rooms and the dance halls connected with them, where young girls from laundries, factories, hotels and restaur- an s were being debauched. (For example, three girls who had been enticed into a saloon were discovered next day in the cellar of the building by a woman passing on the street, who heard their groans; they were lying there stark naked i:.- 98 THE BEAST horribly ill and praying for death; and the police- man on the beat, when he was appealed to, refused to arrest the dive keeper.) Poor mothers appealed to my court to recover from the gamblers the money lost by their young sons. Employers prosecuted, before me, unfor- tunate boys who had stolen to make good their losses at the gaming tables. Even the newsboys were being encouragad to play "policy" with their pitiably small earnings. And when I pre- sented to the Assistant District Attorney the evidence against the gamblers taken publicly in my court, he confessed — confidentially — that his chief, District Attorney Lindsley, would not prosecute, because that was "the policy of the administration." ^^ I went to the District Attorney and demanded, "Why don't you arrest the dive keepers?" He replied that this was the duty of the police and that the Police Loard refused to act. I wrote to the Chief of Police and he replied that he had given my letter to the president of the Board — Mr. Frank Adams. Mr. Frank Adams was not only president of the Police Board; he was president, also, of the ice trust that supplied brewers, saloon keepers and wine-room men with ice. He was a machine politician, with two brothers in the game; and he played the game "for all there was in it." My letter to the, Chief brought Frank Adams THE BEAST AND THE CHILDREN 99 to my chambers to see me, and I made a personal appeal to h.m on behalf of the children. Kth my hand on h.s shoulder, looking him in the face. I tod h.m of what I had seen, of how the young girls and boys were being sacrificed; and h! rrr! ;.*°? ""^^''^ ^'^ P'*""'^^' tJ'"* he would see that the laws were enforced and the children protected. But he did not keep his word. iZ as much, with my own eyes, in a personal investi- gat.on; and the officers of my court confirmed . I sent for the Ch.ef of Police, showed him affidavits furn.hed by Mr. E. K. Whitehead, the secretary of the Humane Socety. exposing the conditions, b;dfaHr'''^'^''''^^°''^'^«"^^--'fof He replied: "You're right. Things are just «« you say, out I'm not going to be held respon t a ion"''ir";.-'u' *^ P"'''^^ '' '"^^ -'J-i^- tration. They thmk they need the support of these people to carry the next elections Your kick must be against the Board and not against frnl!*^ J'^u°"°^'"'f*^*^ ^^ ^''** I had heard from a d.ve keeper whom I had sentenced in my court Judge," he had said, "I don't blame you. but I do blame that Police Board. ThSr man came to me collecting for the chairman of the party committee, and I put up $500, on the promise that the police wouldn't interfere .hh my saloon. Now he says you're kicking up a fuss t.f hi; ' 100 THE BEAST and he can't protect me here." It was corrob- orated later by Frank Ada himself, when he tried to persuade me not to interfere judicially with the Police Board's right to appoint licence inspectors, because, he said, "We've got to keep these dive keepers in line." It was the System agam; the System was making money from the debauching of young girls, and the Police Board was acting as toll keeper on this public road to prostitution. I wrote a note to the members of the Board luvitmg them to my court one Saturday morning, m May, got the newspaper reporters to come, and then took my place on the bench and publicly accused the astonished commissioners of neglect- ing their duties, of knowingly permitting the dives to ruin children, and of being personally respon- sible for r uch of the appalling immorality that came before my court. I addressed myself to them, but it was to the public ear that I was speaking. I described the cases that had come under my own eyes and named the dives in which they had originated. For the public ear again, I threatened that if the Board did not stop this traffic in the debauchery of little children, I should find means of o'otain- mg power whereby our court could stop it. In short, I "grand-standed" — with a megaphone. The newspapers were the megaphone. They printed, on the front pages, "scare-head" accounts THE BEAST AND THE CHILDREN 101 of that scene in the court room, with portraits of the police commissioners and cartoons of them sweating under the denunciations of the court from their pulpits the facts I haJ giv,n and the diarges I had made. There was no withstand- ing the storm. The worst of the dives put up their shutters forthwith, and before they dared oi^n again we had obtained from the Legislature the contributory delinquency" laws and the police powers for probation officers that put the System still has m Denver its tollgates for the men and women who go "the primrose path to the everlastmg bonfire." but at least it no longer levies on the helpless boys and girls whom it once dragged forcibly to physical and moral ruin Meanwhile, we had been carrying on. also, our campaign agamst the jail, with the ultimate pur- pose of obtaining a detention home-school for children. I had found conditions in the jails almost as bad as they were in the dives. Boys repeated to me the obscene stories they had heard there, from the older prisoners, and described the abommable pollutions that had been com- mitted on their little bodies. I learned from a boy sixteen years old. a confirmed criminal, that he had been first imprisoned when he was ten and that he had learned in jail how to crack safes and had practised that art successfully when he was w I 108 THE BEAST fifteen; he told of it with pride, and with an admiration of the man who had taught him. He said It was his ambition now to kill a policeman whom he hated, and he had taken as his model in life a young outlaw named Harry Tracy whose exploits had been reported in the newspapers I found that the boys were guilty of indecent prac- tices among themselves and that, being confined in the matron's quarters, they had broken off the plaster of the wall that separated them from the women's room; and the girls there - it is unmen- tionable. Schoolbqys they were. And when they were r .ased, they went back to school, with the evil lessons they had learned, and taught them to their companions, spreading the plague and mfecting hundreds of young lives with the deadly virus of a physical vice. In addition to all this I found that some of the police were guilty of cruelties to the boys, used language to them that is unreportable, and uncon- sciously taught the boys to hate the law and look upon us all as their enemies. Several boys com- plamed to me that they had been beaten by the jailer, and I found on investigation that they had- the welts and bruises on their bodies showed it- and prisoners who had seen them beaten testified to It. One morning a boy, released from iail where he had been 1, ^ked up on a suspicion that proved false, came running into my chambers in hysterics, with the most awful look of horror on THE BEAST AND THE CHILDREN 103 frightened shudderings. the stor,. of how the police IT^i"^'^ T'"*'^ •■" '^'^ "l*"" pen." where he had been thrown, had spat upon hin, and JUj treated him. I kept going to 'the c"of Pohce ^.th these complamts. and to Frank Adams the president of the Pohce Board. And they S I was going batty" on the "kid question" and encouraging the "little devils" to reL the po"e Things went on in this way until our juvenife bills came before the Legislature, and then he opposition of the Police Board and the Systlm came to a head under Senator "Billy" aSZ JoiS'b "7"m\^'^*™^' '""^ P-i/ent ofThe Police Board. Nothing was done openly. The Board, of course, objected to allowi^ our pro! ^m officers police powers, chiefly Lause'we a reason for opposition could not be acknowl- edged. Instead, the bills were fought secrX m the commii^ees and kept from a vote i^ the "iZij tl • ^^t'^° "^^^ I'^fo'e. on our friendly newspaper reporter named Harry Wilbur, of the /ioc^y Mountain News, I decided to "grand- rtand again. Wilbur had been a police court « !■ 104 THE BEAST I m reporter and knew conditions in the jails. I gave him an interview in which I described some of the cases I had seen and investigated, and I gave him a free hand to add any other "horrible an' revoltin' details" that he knew to be true. The result waa an article that took even my breath away when I read it next day on the front page of the newspaper. It was the talk of the town. It was certainly the talk of the Police Board; and Mr. Frank Adams talked to the reporters in a high voice, indi.screetly. He de- clared that the boys were liars, that I was "crazy," and that conditions in the jails were as good as they could be. This reply was exactly what we wished. I demanded an investigation. The Board professed to be willing, but set no date. We promptly set one for them — the following Thursday at two o'clock in my chambers at the Court House — and I invited to the hearing Governor Peabody, Mayor Wright, fifteen pr. li- nent ministers in the city, the Police Board aud dome members of the City Council. On Thursday morning — to my horror — I learned from a friendly Deputy Sheriff that the subpoenas I had ordered sent to a number of boys whom I knew as jail victims had not been served. I had no witnesses. And in three hours the hearing was to begin. I appealed to the Deputy Sheriff to help me. He admitted that he could not get the boys in less than two days. THE BEAST AND THE CHILDREN 105 "Well then," I said, "for heaven's sake, get me Mickey." And Mickey? Well, Mickey was known to fame as "the worst kid in town." As such, his portrait had been printed in the newspapers — posed with his shine-box over his shoulder, a cigarette in the corner of his grin, his thumbs under his suspenders at the shoulders, his feet crossed in an attitude of nonchalant youthful deviltry. He had been brought before me more than once on charges of truancy, and I hud been using him in an attempt to organize a newsboys' association under the supervision of the court. Moreover, he had been one of the boys who had been beaten by the jailer, and I knew he would be grateful to me for defending him. It was midday before the Sheriff brought him to me. "Mickey," I said, "I'm fa trouble, and you've got to help me out of it. You know I helped you." "Betcher life yuh did. Judge," he said. "I'm wit' yuh. W'at d' yuh want?" I told him what I wanted — every boy that he could get, who had been in jail. "And they've got to be m this room by two o'clock. Can you do it?" Mickey tl ■•-w out his dirty little hand. "Sure I kin. Don't yuh worry, Judge. Get me a wheel — dhat's all." I hurried oi't with him and got him a bicycle, i 1 ■ H i -? .-? i I 106 THE BEAST and ho flew off down Sixteenth Street on it. hii legs so short that his feet could only follow the pedals half way round. I went back to my chambers to wait. I trusted Mick.y. He was the brightest street gamm that our court ever knew. Once we organized a baseball nine, with Mickey as cap. tain, in his quarter of the town where the Irish boys were continually at war in the streets with the Jewish children of the district. We gave them uniforms and bats and balls, on condition that they stop smoking cigarettes and fighting. His nine became the "champmes" of the town among boys of their age; and one day m court I con- gratulated Mickey on his victories. "Aw well. Judge," he said, "yuh see it's dhis way: HaK )' dhese kids is Irish an' half o' dhem 's Jews. An* yuh know when dh' Irish an' dhe Jews get togedher dhey kin lick anyt'ing dhat comes down dhe pike!" "How can that be," I asked him, "when there are nine boys in a baseball team? There must be more of one than the other." "No, dhere ain't, neidher," he said. "Dhe pitcher's an Irish Jew an' dhe best kid in dhe bunch. Come here. Greeny." "Greeny" was a Green- stein and he was red-headed. If he was not an Irish Jew I don't know what he could have been! Anyway, I knew that if Mickey could not get the boys for me, no one could. I waited. As two o'clock approached, the mbisters began to THE BEAST AND THE CHILDREN 107 come into my room, one hy one, any quarter, I could no more then -t- uggle blindly ahead, bewildered and half dazed. In order that what followed may not be as bewildering in the recital as it was in the fact, let me explain that the County Commissioners were valuable to the utility corporations in two ways: they claimed and exercised power, under the law, to raise or lower assessments, and to equalize and rebate taxes; and they appointed the "judges of elections" wLo were supposed to guard the ballot boxes from fraudulent votes. They had reduced the assessment of the Denver Union Water Com- pany from $1,000,000 to $300,000 — the water company whose property was recently valued by its own appraisers at $14,400,000. In the years 1901 and 1902 the Denver Union Water Company and the Denver City Tramway Company had had their taxes rebated nearly $200,000 by these Com- missioners whom I was accus.-ig. By an illegal legal proceeding they remitted fines imposed by the -<2^ m THE BEAST. GRAFT AND BUSINESS 119 courts on dive keepers who were "in right" with 5662 Taylor f, Kclleher, reported 97 Pacifie. 253.) Many election judges whom they appointed were notonous crooks. The Board, in fact, was a villi and sensitive part of the Beast, situated mid- way ,n the barrel of its body, where the man who Zf:it:i;'''^'' '''''''''''''''' ''^ '^' -^^^ ^'^^^ '^^'i The hind claws reached for me first. I becan to receive perfumed notes from unknown young women, mv.t.ng me to meet them at various place! downtown. Not having been accustomed to receive such b.llets-doux. I thought some ,,ractical joker among my friends was making game of me- and I merely filed the letters with the Lrl cor^e -' pondence, and did not answer them. Th.n one l^en Rogers, whom I knew as a member of the Democratic Club, and an election cook, came to me one evening, with a verbal invitation of a sim- ilar sort from a young woman who. he assured me was crazy" about me. I had no overwhelming desire to meet any of " Len •' Rogers's young ladies but I did not tell him so. I said I was bufy. He night with a more pressmg invitation. I became curious. Where did the young lady liver Se named a section of Curtis Street where there were afterward -from a friendly newspaper reported 1 li- i ' ■ i 120 THE DEAST wlio heard tlic story, n.s reporters do — that sev- eral ini'riila'rs of "tlie sung" were waiting for me, in the house, to expose me an a nt>ertino if I came there. (I wonder how often the Beast has suc- ceeded in this little j;ame? Did you ever notice how many reformers are nip|H-d in the l>eginning of a career by a timely scandal ?) Having failed to catch me in that way, an investi- gation of my private life was started. Fortunately I had no private life worth investigating. My life — what there was of it — had all Ijcen public; and I had been too poor aners at night when I was work- ing with our "investigating committee"; and our investigation was actually carried on by the light of candles that we bought at the corner drugstore. The janitor refused to clean our ofFces until the closets became so unsanitary that ive had to appeal to the Board of Health. I became a sort of out- cast among the county officials, and no one would speak to me in the corridors. As I went to my court room, men would mutter, for me to hear: "There's the perjured little \" I found THE BEAST. (illAFT AND BUSINESS la myself avoided on the streets and shunned on the ears; and friends ea.ne to me with scandalous sto- nes that were being circulate.! ahout n>e downlou n tor the first time in my life I thanked my lucky stars that I was not murricl. I \,,^au to feel a.s If 1 were hvnig in a nightmare. It is impossil.le o convey the effect of it i.ut it «■»„ effective. «.^li, the Beast knows how to Ijglit! It was effective an.! it was not; for Lcsidcs gct- tmg on my nerves it ^.,t on „.y tcnpcr. I pushed on the work of investigation, resolved to reply to the covert attacks on me In a public exposure that shouM at least let in the light upon the struggle. At once all my ol*Toi«o is now president of the Denver Fire and Police Board. 126 THE BEAST lion, the motion was carried. I did not speak — except once. That was to remark, to a man next me, that one of the candidates named for an oflBce was "a good man for the place." I was over- heard. My commendation was passed along the line; and the name of the candidate was promptly crossed oil the slate ! (" Hell ! " a friend of his said to me, "what did you say that for?" I apolo- gized.) I had been warned not to "start the commis- sioner business." "You know," my friend had toll me, "we've got to get our election judges appi inted, and Tom Phillips says if we don't stand by him and the other Commissioners, they'll appoint men that'll knife us at the polls." But the air was full of "the commissioner business." The News was charging that the "grafters' ring" was in control of the party. There was a popular demand for their repudiation. And some one at this executive meeting proposed a plank in the Democratic platform declaring, mildly, for hon- esty in public office and an investigation of any alleged dishonesty. Tom Phillips, in an angry outburst, maintained that this plank was a refleftion on the Commis- sioners. " We won't stand for it," he said. " We won't stand for it." And in a confused and some- what befuddled harangue, he threatened that if the plank was inserted he would do what he would do. 'li THE BEAST, GRAFT AND BUSINESS 127 "Dear people," behold your politicians! They did not dare declare for any investigations of hon- esty in public office. Mr. Chas. J. Hughes, Jr., — who is now United States Senator from Colo- rado, and was then attorney for the tramway com- pany — Chas. J. Hughes, the cleverest corpora- tion lawyer at the Colorado bar, wealthy, honoured, bramy, and distinguished — Chas. J. Hughes rose to oppose the resolution, m a ring- ing and eloquent speech. Had not these Com- missioners served their party and their county faithfully for many years ? Should the party turn upon them now? They had not been tried. They had not been found guilty. No, no. No declaration for any mvestigations of honesty in public office for Mr. Chas. J. Hughes. And after some satirical shafts directed toward the obscure corner in which I sat, he concluded a corporation attorney's defence of a corporation's tools in office, with an appeal that carried the day. The plank was voted down. I do not remem- ber that any "leader" at the caucus except ex- Governor Thomas, said even a mild word in defence of honesty and in support of an investiga- tion. At the party convention, next day, I appeared by proxy — I was not a delegate — to make a speech in support of this declaration for "hon- esty in public office" (with no names mentioned), which Mr. Ed. Keating of the Rocky Mountain 128 THE BEAST News was to propose. The chairman of the convention was the attorney for Smith-Brooks! John T. Bottom, attorney for the Commissioners, met me on the floor and threatened that if I opened my mouth I should be accused before the convention of something awful, something damn- ing, something, however, unspecified ! I told him to go ahead and be as awful as he chose. Keat- ing proposed the resolution, and I tried to speak to it, but we were howled down with contempt and anger, curses and execrations. We were treated as if we had been a pair' of rowdies who had inter- rupted, with profanity and an unclean presence, a meeting in a church. I shall never forget the angry indignation in the eyes of some of the dele- gates about me. I began to ask myself: "What have I done? Am I really the sort of despicable hound that I seem to appear to these fellow-Democrats?" I actually began to wonder whether I might not be some sort of political renegade, incapable of appre- ciating my own treason. And yet, some way, I could not see that I was ! When Bryan came to town, a great mass-meet- ing was held for him; and all the county judges — excepting myself — and all the county officials — including the three grafting Commissioners — were invited to sit on the platform behind him. I squeezed into the crowded hall and watched the Commissioners, on the stage, lead the rip-roaring THE BEAST, GRAFT AND BUSINESS 129 applause that greeted Mr. Bryan's fervid defence of the people and the people's ;ights. I knew, of course, that the oflBcials would return next day to the Court House, and send an order for supplies to a "prominent busmess man" that would read somethmg like this: "One dozen letter files. $72" (value $4.80); "one thousand sheets of ruled paper, $280" (value $10); "fifty index books, $600" (value $30). And when Roose- velt came to town, the "prominent business man" (being a Republican) would cheer Roosevelt as wildly as the Commissioners cheered Bryan. And the people's rights would be safe. Quite safe. Do not imagme that I am cynical. I am not attacking men. I am attacking the conditions that debauch men. I am not attacking these victims of the Beast and the System; I am trying to show the power of the Beast and the effects of the System. "Judge," Tom Phillips once said to me, "if these big guys, who put up the money to elect us, expect us to help their big graft of hun- dreds of thousands in rebates of taxes to their corporations, why shouldn't we get a little on the side?" "And, Judge," the prominent business man pleaded, "I've got to do business with these people. They can ruin me in a week if they want to. I can't afford to quarrel with my bread and butter." " And, Judge," a beady-eyed little crook said to me one day in my chambers, "I read the papers. I know what's goin' on in this burg. ':(:■. 130 THE BEAST What do you want to jump on me fer? I ain't swipin' the way those fullahs is." Long before the Commissioners came up for trial I knew that it was I who was to be tried, not they. They were to be acquitted, vindicated, and I was to be "pi t in a hole." The sheriff was friendly to the "accused." The jury was made up of their friends and of men with whom they did business. The judge was brought in from Pueblo County, where the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company controlled the political machine, and he had aspirations. Cass Herrington, counsel for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, acted as a sort of silent attorney for the defence. Charles J. Hughes, Jr., attorney for the corptorations, was the chief counsel, and when he got me in the witness box what a time he had, to be sure! Dis- trict Attorney Lindsley refused to appear in court against the grafters, but I had a friend in his office, a deputy attorney, George Allen Smith, and for his attempt to convict the grafters he was forced later to resign his place. The strain of the trial and of the persecutions that accompanied it, wore me out. I was ill. I heard on all sides that the Commissioners were to be acquitted and that I was to be prosecuted for perjury. I heard it from men in the District Attorney's office, from newspaper reporters, from county officials. I over- heard men talking of it in the corridors. I saw it in the exulting eyes of enemies in my court THE BEAST. GRAFT AND BUSINESS 181 room. And when, on the morning that the ver- dict was returned, the old bailiff of my court came ninnmg up to the bench where I sat hearing cases m a sick despondence, I nearly fainted in my chair when he whispered: "They've found 'em guilty!" How! How did it happen? Why, one of the jurors argued: "Boys, these fellows are only charged with a misdemeanour. The worst they can get is a little fine. But if we acquit them on ♦his charge and another District Attorney gets mto office, he may charge them with a felony and get them sent to the penitentiary." And the friendly jury found them guilty of a misdemeanour to save them from a worse fate! "Judge," that juror said to me afterward, "no one'll ever get me into any graft investigations again. I was blamed for that verdict by the other fellows when the grafters went after them for it, and 1 tell you I've lost thousands of dollars in my business by it. And d them, I did it as a favour to them — to save them from the pen!" The Commissioners were furious. The Dis- trict Attorney was scared white. And the judge — Judge Voorhees, of Pueblo — well, here is part of his speech, from the newspapers of August 12 1903: ^ "In passing sentence, this statute, while it is penal in its nature, as I look at it, does not brand these gentlemen as being criminals. I don't think ti. 132 THE BEAST the evidence in this case warrants any such con- elusion " He believed "these defendants to be honourable gentlemen." He did not ask them as ordinary criminals to " step up to He sentenced," but merely gave them "an opportunity, if any of them have anything to say," to say it before he paused sentence. And his sentence was a fine of ten dollars each! Do you blame the judge? Do you blame the jury, the District Attorney, the coiu^ officials, or even the accused ? Why should you ? Would you blame the girl who was ruined in the wine room or the dive keeper who was ruined to ruin her? Would you blame the boys who were polluted in the jails? No! They were the victims, not the authors, of their infamy. If you must blame some one, blame those heads of lawless public-ser'ce corporations in Colorado who corrupt jurl ;s, juries, legislators, public officials, political wo kers, gamblers, dive keepers, and prostitutes, so that they and their corporations may be safe above the law and in power to loot the people. They are the men. To them accrues the profit of this debauchery. Let them Dear its shame. CHAPTER Vm AT WORK WITH THE CHILDBEN THROUGH these two years of quarrellmg and crusading, our court work for the children was going on very happily. It was a recreation for us all, and it kept me full of hope — for it was successful. We were getting the most unexpected results. We were learning something new every day. We were deducing, from what we learned, theories to be tested in daily practice, and then devising court methods by which to apply the theories that proved correct. It had all the fas- cination of scientific research, of practical inven- tion, and of a work of charity combined. It was a succession of surprises and a continual joy. I had begun merely with a sympathy for chil- dren and a conviction that our laws against crime were as inapplicable to children as they would be to idiots. I soon realized that not only our laws but our whole system of criminal procedure was wrong. It was based upon fear; and fear, with children, as with their elders, is the father of lies. I found that when a boy was brought before me, I could do nothing with him until I had taken the fear out of hb heart; but once I had gotten rid 133 m IS4 THE BEAST of that fear, I found — to my own amazement — that I could do anything with him. I could do things that seemed miraculous, especially to the police, who seldom tried anything hut abuse and curses, and the more or less refined brutalities of the "sweat box" and the "tb/d degree." I learned that instead of fear we must use sympathy, but without cant, without hypocrisy, and without sentimentalism. We must first convince the boy that we were his friends but the determined ene- mies of his misdeeds; that we wished to help him to do T'g'ht, but could do nothing for him if he per- sisted in doing wrong. We had to encourage him )' confess his wrongdoing, teach him wherein it nad been wrongdoing, and strengthen him to do right thereafter. I found — what so many others have found — that children are neither good nor bad, but either strong or weak. They are naturally neither moral nor immoral — but merely unmoral. They are little savages, living in a civilized society that has not yet civilized them, often at war with it, fre- quently punished by it, and always secretly in rebellion against it, until the influences of the home, the school and the church gradually overcome their natural savagery and make them moral and responsible members of society. The mistake of the criminal law had been to punish these little savages as if they had been civilized, and by so doing, in nine cases out of ten, make them crim- AT WORK WITH THE CHILDREN 133 inal savages. Our work, we found, was to aid the civilizing forces -the home, the school, and the church - and to protect society hy malting th- children good members of society instead of punishing them for t„>ing irresponsible ones. If we failed, and the child proved incorrigible, the criminal law could then be invoked. But the infrequency with which we failed was one of the surprises of the work. Take, for example, the case of Lee Martin and his 'River Front Gang." He was a bov burg- lar, a sneak thief, a pickpocket, a jail breaker, and a tramp; and his "gang" was known to the newspapers as the most desperate band of young cnmmals in Denver. Lee Martin and another member of the gang, named Jack Heirael, were one night caught in a drugstore into which they had broken; and when I went to see them in jail, 1 found them strapped to the benches in their cells, bruised and battered from an interview with the police, in whioh they had been punished for refusing to ".,jitch" (tell) on their fellow-mem- bers of the gang. This was before the passage of our juvenile court laws and I wished to have an opportunity to try what I could do with these two boys. The police did not wish me to have them. I told the boys that I intended to try to help them, and they sneered at me. I told them that I thought they had not been given "a square 136 THE BEAST deal" — which was true — but they did not re- spond. I used what tact and sympathy I could to draw them out and get their side of the story of their war with society, but it took me some- thing like a month of frequent visits to get them to trust me and to believe that I wished to help them. In the end I was successful. I got their story — a story too long to repeat here; but it proved to me that the boys had been as much sinned against as sinning. They had begun as irresponsible lit- tle savages, and they had been made desperate young criminals. Their parents had failed to ci\llize them, and the school and the church had never had an opportunity to try. I resolved to see if it was too late to begin. The police captain assured me that it was. "You can't 'baby' Lee Martin." he said. "He's been in jail thirteen times, and it hasn't done him any good." "Well, I'd like to see what we can do," I replied. "If we fail, we'll still have twelve times the best of the jail. It has cost this city, in officers' fees alone, over a thousand dollars to make a criminal of him. Let us see how much it will cost to turn him into an honest boy." The officer reeled off a long list of Martin's offences, and I retorted by showing a typewritten record of them, twice as long. "How in the world did you get 'em. Judge?" he said. "We couldn't sweat 'em out of him." AT WORK WITH THE CHILDREN 137 After a week of such argument, we got the case referred to our court. The boys were tried; and. of course, their guilt was clear. I sent them back to the jail under suspended sentence, and thought the matter over. One night I had them brought to my chambers under guard, and after a talk with Heimel I sent hun and the guard away, and concentrated on Martm. I decided to put my influence over hun to the test. I told him of the fight I was makmg for him, showed him how I had been spendmg all my spare time "trying to straighten things out for hii , and Heimel, and warned him that the police did not bel.Vve I could succeed. JNow, Lee, I said, "you can run away if you want to, and prove me a liar to the cops. But I want to help you, and I want you to stand by me. I want you to trust me, and I want you to go back to the jail there, and let me do the best I can." He went. And he went alone — unguarded. Then I put him and Heunel on probation, and !i\,*/rj.fy' ^^^y "^"^^ '« ««« ™e and brought Red Mike and Tommie Green, of the "River Front Gang." I talked to them about their offences against the law, and told them I wanted to help them do what was right and live honest lives unpersecuted by the police; and I praised Martin for his moral strength in going back to the jail alone. Before they left me, "Red" and Tommie !K 138 THE BEAST had "snitched" on themselves, and I had two new probationers. One by one the others fol- lowed, until I had all seven members of the gang on my list, all confessed wrongdoers pledged to give up crime and make an honest effort to be "straight." Six of the seven are to-day honest young workmen; Lee Martin failed, after a long and plucky fight, and is now in the penitentiary. "The River Front Gang," to my knowledge, has been responsible for the reformation of thirty boys in Denver; and Lee Martin, in his time, did more to discourage crime than any policeman in the city. For example : one day a boy — whom I knew — stole a pocketbook from a woman in a department store. I told Lee that something ought to be done for that boy, and Lee brought him to me — from a cheap theatre where he had been "treating the gang." We worked on him together, and we straightened him up. He has since become a trusted employee in the very store in which he stole the pocketbook. In another instance, I sent Lee after a boy, arrested for stealing a watch, who had sawed his way out of jail and had not been recaptured by the police. Lee got him — in El Paso — and brought him to me. After a talk with him, I gave him a twenty-dollar bill and sent him, alone, unshadowed, to redeem the watch, which he had pawned for $3. He returned with the watch and AT WORK WITH THE CHILDREN 139 the $17 change. Then I persuaded him to return the watch to the man from whom he had stolen it and, of course, the prosecution against him was dropped. We have never since had a complaint agamst that boy, although he had been one of the worst boy thieves in the city. I could relate cases of this sort interminably I have related them, in newspaper interviews, in magazme articles, and from the public platform And I 'ad that many people have misunderstood me and have accepted my statements as evidence that I have some sort of hypnotic power over boys and can make them do things contrary to their natures. I can not. I do nothing that any man or woman cannot do by the same method. It is the method that works the miracle — although of course, no one in his senses will claim that the method never fails, that there are no cases b which force and punishment have to be used ^Another lesson about boys I learned from little »w'!u ^- V^y^"" ' '^'^ investigating his charge that the jailer had beaten him. The jailer said: Some o those kids broke a window in there, and when I asked Mickey who it was he said he didn't know. O- course he knew. D' you think I'm gom to have kids lie to me?" A police com- missioner who was present turned to Mickey: Mickey, he said, "why did you lie?" Mickey faced us. in his rags. "Say," he asked, "do yuh t mk a fuUah ought to snitch on a kid ? " And the 140 THE BEAST way he a^ked it made me ashamed of myself. Here was a quality of loyalty that we should be fostering in him instead of trying to crush out of him. It was the beginning, in the boy, of that feeling of responsibility to his fellows on which society is founded. Thereafter no child brought before our court was ever urged to turn state's evidence against his partners in crime — much less rewarded for doing so, or punished for refusing to do so. Each was encouraged to "snilch" on him- self, and himself only. Still another lesson I learned from an inveterate little runaway named Harry. After several attempts to reform him, I sentenced him to the Industrial School in Golden; and this being before the days of the Detention School, he was returned to the jail until a sheriff could "take him up." That night the jailer telephoned me that Harry was in hys- terics, screaming in his cell and calling wildly to me to help him. "You'd better come down. Judge," the jailer said, "an' see if you can get him quiet." I went to the jail. Inside, the steel doors were opened and the steel bolts withdrawn, one by one, with a portentous clanking and grating. It was as if we were about to penetrate to some awful dungeon in which a murderous giant was penned — so formidable were the iron obstacles that were swung back before us and clashed^shut on our heels. And when I reached, at the end of a guarded corridor, the barred door of Harry's AT WORK WITH THE CHILDREN 141 cell there, in the dim glow of a hght overhead, he boy lay asleep on the floor, his round little legs drawn up. his head pillowed on his tiny arm his baby face pale under the prison lamp. The sight was so pitifully ridiculous that I choked up at It. It seemed such a folly - .uch a cruel terror "^ * ''^'^^ '" '"'''' * P'"^^ °^ '""^'y The jailer opened the cell door for me, and I began to raise the boy to put him on his prison stretcher. H« head fell back over my arm. like an mfant's. He woke with a start and clutched me, m a return of the hysterical fear that had been mercifully forgotten m sleep. And then, when he recognized me. "Judge." he pleaded. Judge. Gi me another chance. I'll be good. Judge! Just once -once more. Judge'" I had to sit down beside him on the floor Ind try to reassure him. ' I tried to be stern with him. I told him that 1 had trusted him and trusted him again and again; and he had failed me every time I exp amed that we were sending him to the Indus- trial School for his own good, to make a "strong" boy of hun; that he was "weak." untrustworthy. 1 can help you, Harry," I said. "But you've got to carry yourself. If I let boys go when they do bad thmgs, I'll lose my job. The people'!! another judge, in mv dace, to " " if / don't do it. I can't let pla you go.' punish boys. ' i 148 THE BEAST We went over it and over it; and at last I thought I had him feeling more resigned and cheerful, and I got up to leave him. But when I turned to the door, he fell on his knees before me and stretching out his little arms to me, his face dktorted with tears, he cried: "Judge! Judge! If you let me go, I'll never get you into trouble againi" I had him ! It was the voice of loyalty. " Mac," I said to the jailer, "this boy goes with me. I'll write an order for his release." I took him to his home that night, but his mother did not wish to have him back. Her husband had deserted her; she worked all day in a hotel kitchen; she could not take proper care of her boy, and she was afraid that he would be killed on some of his long "bumming" trips in the freight cars. But she finally consented to give him another trial; and this tune he "stuck." "Judge," she told me long afterward, "I asked Harry, the other day, how it was he was so good for you, when he wouldn't do it for me or the policeman. And he says : ' Well, maw, you see if I gets bad agin, the Judge he'll lose hb job. I've got to stay with him, 'cause he stayed with me.'" I have used that appeal to loyalty hun- dreds of times since, in our work with the boys, and it is almost infallibly successful. I saw, too, from Harry's case, that if we were to reform children we must help parents who AT WORK WITH THE CHILDREN 143 were unable to keep a close watch on their chil- dren. And nowadays if one of our probationers fails to arrive at school, the teacher is required to telephone the Juvenile Court immediately, and a probation oflScer starts out at once to find the delinquent. Every two weeks, on "report day," the probationers must bring us reports on their behaviour from the school, the home and the neighbourhood; and by praising those who have good reports and censuring those who have bad ones, we are not only able to prevent wrong- doing but to encourage right-doing. We impress on the children the need of doing right because it is right, because it "hurts to do wrong," because only "weak kids" do wrong — no< because wrong is punished; for that teaching, I believe, is the great error of our ethics. The fear of pun- ishment, I find, makes weak children liars and hypocrites, and, with strong ones, it adds to the enticement of evil all the proverbial sweetness of forbidden fruit. During the first two years of our work, 554 children were put on probation; only 31 were ever returned to the court again, and of these 31 a number were returned and sent to Golden because of the hopelessness of reforming them in their squalid homes. One evening a probationer brought four boys to my chambers with the announcement that they wished to "snitch" on themselves. They had \m 144 THE BEAST been stealing bicycles — making a regular prac- tice of it — and they had five such thefts to their discredit. I investigated their story and found it to be true. The police had a complete record of the thefts, and I tried — and got the boys to try — to recover the wheels, but we could not; they had been sold and resold and quite lost track of. A police officer, with whom I con- sulted, insisted that the boys should be arrested and sentenced to jail ; and while I listened to him it dawned upon me what the difference was between the criminal procedure and the methods of our court. "Officer," I said, "you are trying to save bicycles. I am trying to save boys. The boys are more important than the bicycles. And if we can save the boys we can save bicycles in the future that we could not save in the past." I put the boys on probation, with the under- standing that if they did not live up to their new resolve to be honest, I should be allowed to use their confessions against them. Not one of them failed me. The court helped them to get work and they are honest and useful members of soci- ety to-day. In one year 201 boys came in this way to our court, voluntarily, and confessed their wrong- doing, and promised to "cut it out." One evening, after I had adjourned court and the room had emptied, I saw a youngster sitting in a chair by the rear wall, apparently forgotten AT WORK WITH THE CHILDREN 145 by his parents. He was no bigger than a baby. I sent the bailiff to ask him if he knew his name or his address. He came up to the bench — to my chair on the platform — and hiding his face against my shoulder he began to cry. He had been "swipb' things." he said, and wanted to "cut it out. " And would I give him a chance — as I had another boy he knew? We gave him a chance. He reported regularly, for more than a year, and proved to be an honest, sturdy boy. Another boy who came to my chambers with a similar confession was so small that I said to him, "You're a mighty little boy. How did you find your way down here?" "Well," he replied, "most every kid I seed knew the way." I found that nearly all these boys were members of neigh- bourhood "gangs," that some member of the gang had been in court, had gone back to the gang with the lessons we had tried to teach him and had used his influence to send the other boys to us. We began to reach for this gang spirit and to turn it to our uses instead of against us; and we succeetled there, too, in time. I could relate scores of stories that came to us of how the gangs threatened to "beat up" some young delinquent if he did not play "square with the Judge." We taught the boys who had Insen doing wrong that they should try to "owtwme the evil" they had done, by now doing something good; and they practis* save men; and it does neither: it mnkcs more criminals than it crushes. I helievv il at the methods of our Juvenile Court could be applied to half the criminal cases on our calendars. The majority of our criminals are not born, but made — and ill-made. They can be re-made as easily as the " River Front Gang" was rc-raaile if we would use the methods of Christianity on them and not those of a sort of fiendish p(><^Lini.sin thjit cxm-ts "an eye for an eye," and exacts it m i spirit of vengeance. Does this read as if I were "cm/.y" ? Do not think so. It b a conclusion bused upon years of thoughtful experience. I have obtained a law in Colorado — the first of its kind in the history of jurisprudence, if that be anything against it! — by which an adult accused of crime can be tried as our children are tried and aided and corrected by the state as parens patrioe, just as our children are aided and corrected. And I am willing to stake my faith on ft that if our courts and our prisons ever learn how to work under such a law, you will see not only children but grown men and women going from the court rooms with their commitment papers in their hands and knocking en the gates of the prisons tu be admitted. Crazy? When I first told one 150 THE BEAST of our deputy sheriffs that in future I should send boys to Golden without him, he said to my clerk: "Well, I've always heard Lindsey was crazy, but I never believed it till to-day!" And when a hardened young criminal went, from my court, 250 miles to the Buena Vista refor- matory alone, and presented himself at the gates of the prison, "the sentry" (as I was afterward told) "almost fell off the walls." Crazy? Do you know that over half the inmates of reforma- tories, jails and prisons in this country are under twenty-five years of age? (Some authorities say under twenty-three.) Do you know that an English prison commission not long ago reported to Parliament that the age of sixteen to twenty was the essentially criminal age? Do you know that the Earl of Sh8f*'>sbury after much study declared that not tw ■ out of any hundred criminals in London had formed the habits that led to criminality aftei the twenti- eth year? I may be very crazy and yet not be as crazy as the people who in the face of these facts believe that the criminal methods of our civilization are anything but a gigantic crime and a stupendous folly. Some day our descend- ants will read of our methods of handling crimi- nals as we now read of how our ancestors impris- oned the insane in chains and used the methods of a Siberian jailer on the inmates of the mad- hou:>e! Never doubt it. Under our civil laws AT WORK WITH THE CHILDREN I5i lo-day Masters of Discipline could be appointed —as Masters in Chancery are appointed - to aid and correct delinquents, especially young delmquents, in our cities; to allow them to repent and make [reparation - as they cannot under our crunmal procedure; to help them rise from immorality and clean their hands of crime — as no judge can help them now, without being guilty of compounding a felony." That will come, some day. If not in aur day. then so much the worse for us! I cannot conclude this chapter without add- ing the final lesson I learned in our work with the children -the lesson that leads me back again into the quarrel with the Beast. It is this- criminals are bom and crimmals are bred, but the conditions of which they are bom and under which they are bred in Denver are the same con- ditions that debauch our Legislature, our judic- la^. our press, our business life, and our poor I found no "problem of the children" that was not also the problem of their parents. The young bud was blighted by the same cormption that infected the twig, killed the branch and ate out the heart of the trunk. The rule of the plu- tocracy in Denver was the cause of three-quar- ters of the crime in Denver. The dependent and delmquent children who came into my court came almost wholly from the homes of depend- ent and delmquent parents who were made such if .^'. 152 THE BEAST !'■ by the hopeless economic conditions of their lives; and those conditions were made hopeless by the remorseless tyranny of wealthy men who used their lawless power to enslave and brutalize and kill then- workmen. Legislatures, corrupted by corporate wealth, refused to pass the eight-hour law that would give the child's home a parent able to fulfil hi« parental duties — refused to pass the employer's liability law that would save the widows from starvation and the children from the streets — refused to pass even a "three- fourths jury" law that would allow the poor vic- tim of corporate greed to ol>tain a little pittance of justice in the courts. The saloons, protected by the political power of the corporatitms, de- bauched the parents and destroyed the homes of our children, and the protected gambler hunted and preyed with the protected saloon. I could not do my duty toward the children without attacking the conditions that deformed the lives of the children. And when I tried to do this — as you shall see — the Beast replied: "Then you shall not be allowed to save even the little children." CHAPTER IX THE BEA8T AND THE BALLOT THESE days of 1902, 1903 and 1904 were the heydays of our Juvenile Court, and I should like to dwell upon them fondly — as the song says — because of what ensued. Our campaigns against the wine rooms, the jails, and the grafting Commissioners had made the court as popular as a prizefighter, and the newspapers kept it constantly in the public eye. The Denver Chamber of Commerce — (let me boast of it !) — invited me to luncheon, gave a reception in my honour, and praised me to the last blush. (This is the same Chamber that has since branded me an enemy of the state.) Philanthropic men and women assisted our Juvenile Improvement Association, helped with our charity benefits, and contributed to the Fresh Air Fund, the sum- mer camp, the day nursery, and other branches of our work, with all the delighted eagerness of Lady Bountiful herself. (At a recent "bene- fit" given in the aid of the Juvenile Court by Miss Olga Nethersole there were not two hundred persons in the whole house; and "Society" was conspicuously elsewhere.) Mr. Walter S. Chees- 154 THE BEA9T man, pre^dent of the water company, was at the head of ojir Association, and if we needed money we had only to ask for it. (Thus is the same Walter S. Cheesman who afterward lent a vacant lot to a charity bazaar on condition that not a penny of the proceeds should go to the Juvenile Court work.) I was elected chairman of a buikling committee of the Y. M. C. A. (from which I afterward resigned .vhen I found that my chairmanship hindered the work of raising money for the Association). I was made a member of the Board of Tru.>»tees of the Denver University. (And Miss Ida Tarbell could not have been removed from the Board of Rockefeller's Chicago college more shrewdly and softly than I was "transferred" from the Denver University Board when the days of my offence against the " inter- ests" developed.) In short. I was receiving the .same applause in Denver that Heney received in San Francisco before he turned from prose- outing grafters to prosecuting the big business men and "leading citizens" who mads the grafters. I had as yet done only one thing to offend busi- ness: that was the enforcement of the child-labour laws in 1902. Cotton mills had been established just outside of Denver, and poor families had been imported from Alabama and the Caroli- nas to work as operatives. I went through the factories, visited the homes and talked with the children ; and I found that the awful labour con- M THE BEAST AND THE BALLOT 155 ditions of the Southern cotton mills had been transplanted to Colorado. The workers were practically slaves, for they had been imported under contract and had assigned part of their wages, in advance, to pay for transportation; and boys and girls from ten to twelve years of age were at work in the mills, without education and subject to the temptations of bad moral con- dkions, trying to help free their parents from the bondage of debt. We took proceedings against the company — in spite of an outcry that we were interfering with a prosperous industry that added to the wealth of the state — and we fined the owners and the superintendent the limit allowed by the law. One of the men of wealth interested in the mills came to my chambers and protested. He had lived in the community a good many years, he said, and he was no criminal. It was all ri^t to fine the superintendent; the superintendent was reaponsible for the conditions at the mills. But it was all wrong to fine him, the owner; for he had a reputation and a good name and he did not propose to be branded a criminal. "We have never had any trouble," he said, "until this fight started. We're helping Denver, and we ought to be encouraged instead of being perse- cuted. I warn you, right now, that if this thing b kept up, we'll shut down the mills and you'll have to take the consequences." (]"■ ^m I«6 THE BEAST The thbg was kept up. The children were forced to go to school. The mill shut' down. And I became "an enemy of prosperity" — pros- perity foimded upon the slavery of children and the stunting of young lives. The child-labour problem is a problem of the Beast. If you, who read this, live in a city or a state where the mil! and the factory are enslav- ing helpless little children, understand that these children are the victims of the Beast. It lives upon them. You must fight it, if you would save them. We have had no child-labour problem in Denver since; but our work in ridding the city of it did not weigh heavily against the court, for the loss of the mills was not great enough to be offensive. The court continued to be popular; the politicians were aware of its popularity; they decided that its popularity would be a valuable political asset; and as I approached the end of my term of office, I was met by various advances on the part of those Democratic "leaders" who had so indignantly shunned and repudiated me at the time of the printing-steal exposures. I had, however, learned to be suspicious of politicians, especially "when they come bearing gifts." And I soon learned that the gift they offered me b this instance was a "gold brick." Let me explain how I learned it. My experience on the bench and in politics has convinced me that the confessional fulfils a THE BEAST AND THE BALLOT 157 need of humanity that is almost as mstinctive as the need of religion itself. I have found that among young criminals the desire to "snitch" on themselves is practically irresistible; on the slightest encouragement they blurt out the truth as if their tongues spoke m spite of them. Strang- est of all, the "bad" politicians, like the "bad" boys, have come to my chambers in scores, even while they were publicly fighting me, and confessed their crimes (sometimes before they committed them!) with a pitiful eagerness that would soften the heart of the bitterest cynic who ever sneered at human frailty. (The Heart could make them do its work, but it could not make then wholly bestial. There always remained in them some generous relent- ance that made than betray their faith with injustice. And in all the attacks that have been made upon me. in this curious struggle with the System, there has scarcely been a blow aimed at me of which I have not been forewarned. That, too, b one of the experiences of my life that has made me always hope.) While I was in forced retirement politically — because of my exposure of the grafting County Commissioners — I was kept constantly informed of the secrets of the System by these confessions of the System's tools. I was informed, particu- larly, of the way elections were managed so as to keep the Beast in power. w 158 THE BEAST Under the law, as we had it then, the County Clerk appointed the deputy clerks before whom the proapective voter appeared to have his nam* registered on the voters' lists: and the applictkat had to bring with him two witnesses to swear that he had a legal right to vote. Well and good! His name was dulj entered on a sheet of paper, and these sheets weiv returned from the various wards to the Clerk s oflSce, there to be copied into the registral- ? a history of the gigantic activities of the plutocracy, out of the conflicting testimony of various witnesses and the disputable interpretation of incidents of which there may be more than one sense. I am only seeking to make plain to you what I saw with my own eyes — to put before you the evidence of a personal experience of which there can be no doubt — to show you clearly, in the little, what was actually going on in the large. My election had been declared invalid, as I had known it would be; and it became necessary for me to run again. The corporations, having put their Democratic tools in power in the city elections of the spring, now bought back the Republican machine so as to elect a corporation Legislature and governor in the state elections of 186 THE BEAST the fall. I expected, therefore, to have the Repub- licans against me, and we l>egan to organize the us';bI committees and arrange for the usual public meetings in advance. But several days before the Republican convention was to meet, a number of Republican "leaders," in newspaper inter- views, announced that there would be no oppo- sition to my nomination on the Republican ticket; and Mr. "Jim" Williams, one of the most inti- mate of VVm. G. Evans's personal agents, invited me to meet him in a room in the Brown Palace Hotel and assured me that it would not be neces- sary to "organize" my friends. "There seems to be no use trying to fight you," he said with a smile, "and we have decided to nominate ^ ju when the convention meets next week." I felt relieved. The spring campaign '' d been a nervous trial that I did not wish to ^at. I thanked Williams for saving me the a xiety of several days' uncertainty, and wtJt baci. to my court work. Some days later I spoke to a Republican friend about the interview w'ui Williams, and he said: "That's strange. Jim iias been quietly sending the word 'down the line' that the party caucus is to put young Bert Shattuok (Hubert L. Shattuck)* on the slate, to-night, for County Judge." I thought my friend was misinformed. The Den- ver Republican, the official organ of the party, 'Shattuck if now (Jan., ISIO) a Diitrict Judge in Damr. THE BEAST AT BAY 187 had been proclaiming in large headlincii and leaded ty|>c that I «vus to l>e nominated unani- mously on the party ticket. Bert Shattut-k's father, the former Dean of the Denver University, had publicly declared that I ought to have the position of County and Juvenile Court judge for life; and he had come smilingly to my -hambcrs and promised me his loyal support. IIi.-> .son had been Clerk of the County Court when 1 first took office, and we had never been anything but friendly. It seemed to me im[H)s.sible that my Republican informant could be right. The night on which the Republican caucus met, to make up a slate for the convention, I made no attempt to find out what was being done; but at midnight I was roused from bed to answer an urgent call on the telephone, and a friend an- nounced: "The Republicans have selected Shot- tuck for County Judge. Evan' sent a telegram from New York saying it b.id to be 'lone. The cor- porations are against you. They're going to prevent you from getting a nomination on either ticket." I dressed in haste and hurried down to the office of the News — which paper, like the Den- ver Post, was then friendly to me — and a special edition was rushed to the presses with a flaming exposure of "Treachery" on the front page. In the early morning I went to the editor of the Post and a special edition was issued by that paper too. But the Republican — the paper that had Jl HI ' it 188 THE BEAST 'i 1 I 111 been promising my unopposed nomination by the Republican party — inserted only an mcon- spicuous five-line paragraph announcing that Shattuck had been selected by the caucus! We had been prettily betrayed. There was no time now to arouse the public sentiment that, at the previous election, had "scared the wits out of the Boss," as the Post had said. There was no time to organize the women and children. We had just twelve hours in which to prepare, before the Republican convention should meet to ratify the choice of the caucus; and it might as well have been twelve minutes. The Demo- cratic machine was against me. Mayor Speer, it was reported in the newspapers, "on the very best authority," had obtained the promise from Evans that I should not be nominated. "Chair- man Davoren, for the Democrats, smiled pleasantly when these matters were being discussed." I had been "effectually blocked." Opposed by both parties, with both machines using election frauds and corporation contributions against me, I could have no more hope of winning my way back to the county court on an independent ticket than of getting an election to the White House itself. Some of the young Republican reformers who had nominated me in the spring campaign came to my chambers, that morning, and talked the situation over with me. They suggested that I THE BEAST AT BAY 189 should appeal to Mr. David H. MoflFat, who was president of the First National Bank of Denver and a large stockholder in the utility corpora- tions. But I did not know Mr. Moffat. The only man of the sort whom I knew was Mr. Walter S. Cheesman, president of the Denver Union Water Company and head of our Society for the Pre- vention of Cruelty to Children. "Then see Cheesman," they advised. I knew Mr. Cheesman well. I had first gone to him to get his aid in obtaining the public baths and playgrounds for the children, and he had been helping us in our work for the children ever since. I had more than once accompanied him, in his automobile, on little jaunts around Denver; and once, on our way to inspect the waterworks dam, which his company was building outside Denver, I saw him stop his car, pick up a stray cat mew- ing by the roadside, and take it to the dam where we caught fish to feed it. I thought him a gentle and compassionate man of wealth — and I hur- ried, now, to his oflSce to appeal to his philan- thropy, to his interest in our court work, and above all to his influence with Mr. Evans and his power on the corporation boards. I went to the oflSces of the Denver Union Water Company, and was ushered down the inner pas- sageways, past clerks and secretaries, to Mr. Cheesman's private room. He was seated at his mahogany writing desk, a typical business 190 THE BEAST man in his business clothes — bald, elderly, with a round and kindly face but shrewd, cold eyes. He received me genially enough. "Mr. Chees- man," I said, at once, "I've come to see you about the convention." "Yes, yes, Judge," he said; "sit down." I sat down. He always spoke in a sort of half voice, that at times became a whisper, leaning forward, as if confidentially, because his hear- ing was defective. "Yes, I've just been talking to Mr. Field about it over the telephone." Mr. Field, of course, was Mr. E. B. Field, president of the telephone company. Thus encouraged, I went on to explain my situ- ation. I told him that I had made a lot of ene- mies among the Democrats because I had exposed the grafting County Commissioners and attacked the Police Board for protecting the wine rooms and denounced the ballot-box stuflBng that had been done by the Democratic machine. I could not hope for the Democratic nomination, but I had been led to expect a place on the Republican ticket. Now I had been betrayed by the Repub- lican caucus. "It's not square," I said. "It's not honest. It's not fair." He listened, but I saw that he listened unmoved. Then I appealed to his interest in the work we had done for the children. He heard me poiitely, but with a blank eye. "You know," I pleaded, "that I'm entitled to a renomination on every THE BEAST AT BAY 191 count. The court has been honest; it's been efficient; it has served the public interest every time. The people will elect me; you know that. Nobody's against me but Mr. Evans, and it's Mr. Evans that's standing in my way. He sent a telegram from New York saying I wasn't to be nominated. That's the whole trouble. If we can get Mr. Evans to keep his hands off, I'll have no difficulty. Won't you help us? We can do it if you'll help pull off Mr. Evans." "Yes," he said, "I understand that Mr. Evans is against you. And I've been thinking the mat- ter over. I'd like to see you returned to the court. You've been doing good work there . . . Yes . . . Personally Mr. Field and I admit all you say. You are entitled to be renominated. But Mr. Evans represents our interests in poli- tics, and, of course, you understand, politics with us is a matter of business. Mr. Evans represents our interests and we cannot ■. ry well question his judgment. If Mr. Evans were here, I'd make an exception in your favour and see him about it. But he's in > ' York " "Send him a telegram," I put in eagerly, "I can get it rushed through. I know them — down at the telegraph offices. We can get an answer back before the convention meets." He shook his head over it, judicially. "I'm afraid it's too late. Mr. Evans insists that Mr. Shattuck must be nominated by the Republicans. [ 5 :'■ 192 THE BEAST n. He has arranged with Mr. Speer that Judge John- son (Henry V. Johnson) is to be nominated on the Democratic ticket. I'm afraid I can't go behind him." "Well! What about the people?" I cried. He replied, benignly: "You have been long enough in politics to know the people have nothing to do v'ith these things." He spoke as if I were a personal friend come to borrow money from his company, without secur- ity, and he regretted that he could not leu'' it — as a matter of business — though personally he would have liked to. I felt the ground slipping from under my feet. I made a frantic appeal to him — for the sake of the work for the children which would be discredited all over the country if I were refused a nomination by both parties. Every one would think the Juvenile Court had been a failure. In other cities, where I had been lecturing, they would think so. They would not understand why I had been defeated. The move- ment was growing. A check to it might be fatal now. The other cities were looking to Denver. It would hurt tho work for the children all over the states. "Tut, tut," he said. He thought I was "over- exercised" — "unduly" alarmed. Mr. Shattuck was an intelligent young man. He could con- tinue the work. Or Judge Johnson. By this time I had lost my self-control. I knew THE BEAST AT BAY 193 that neither Shattuck nor Johnson could do the work of our court; they had no training for it, no knowledge of its methods, no understanding of its aims. Besides, it was the work of my life; it was the one thing left to me; I had fought and suffered for it, struggled and succeeded with it, when no one believed in it. And now I jumped up from my chair and began pacing about the room, arguing, pleading with him, almost beseeching him not to join Mr. Evans in crushing our court because we had done what was honest, what was right. "It's an outrage!" I cried, backing up against the wall before him. "It's an outrage that Mr. Evans should be the man to say whether I'm to work for the children in this community — or not!" He seemed embarrassed, as if he were a public executioner who pitied his victim but could not help him. "Sit down a minute," he would say; and I would sit down, only to spring up again when his unyielding "business" considerations forced me to face again the hopelessness of my situation. "I'll run any way," I said in des- peration. "No," he warned me, "don't do that. As a friend, I wouldn't advise you to do that. If I thought you had a chance, I'd like to see you run. But you know it's impossible under our ballot laws. The people don't know how to 'scratch.' It's impossible." He was afraid that I was such ( t I 194 THE BEAST 'I 'K a "headstrong young man" I miglit make an expensive independent campaign, and mortgage my house (he even thought of that!) and lose all I had. And while he spoke, calmly, the anger rose in my throat. I could guess why Mr. Evans was to give the Democratic nomination to Judge Johnson; wasn't it because Judge Johnson, while mayor of Denver, had signed a franchise for the tramway company against the protests of the whole community and in violation of the plat- form on which he had been elected? I could guess why Mr. Evans had insisted that I should not be nominated by either party; wasn't it because I had refused to job the election contests ? Weren't these the "business considerations" that put Mr. Evans against me and joined Mr. Cheesman with him? Mr. Cheesman might pretend to be as friendly and as fatherly as he chose, in his advice; my anger dried the blur in my eyes and I saw through him. I saw through him and I despised him. Business demanded that I should be crushed. The Beast required it. The tools of the Beast — like the grafting Commissioners who had rebated taxes for Mr. Cheesman's corpora- tions — insisted on it. The ballot laws made it possible — the very laws which Cheesman deplored and his corporations took advantage of! I struck my clenched hand on his table, furious with indignation. "I'm going to make a fight," I challenged him. " Will you stand by me ?" THE BEAST AT BAY 195 "I can't," he hedged, "if you run independent. You have no chance." That was the end. That was the "show- down." I caught up my hat. "I'm going to fight," I said, "and figiit like hell." And with- out waiting to hear his fluttered remonstrances I flung out of his office, trembluig with an agitation I could not conceal from the clerks who stared at me as I hurried by. It was the Beast again, the whole Beast at last, self-acknowledged and unashamed. The people had "nothing to do with these things." The united corporations ruled the town. I had offended tliem when I fought graft, ballot-box stuffing, the wine rooms, the Police Board, and all the other effects, means and agents of their rule. And here I had wasted a valuable hour appealing to one of the patrons of this corrup- tion to help me fight it! I do not know whether I despised Cheesman more than I despised myself for my trusting simplicity as I hurried back to my chambers that morning from my appeal to the head of the Children's Aid Society to save the Children's Court! I had only a few hours left. The Republican convention was to meet that afternoon. I tele- phoned to all my friends among the young Repub- licans, telling them that Cheesman would not help, that we must fight alone and at least go down fighting. They must hold the floor in the con- m m 106 THE BEAST vention until we could get in the women — the children — anybody who would shout for us and intimidate the machine. I got all the men who had fought for me in the Republican convention in the spring — E. P. Costigan, James C. Stark- weather, Wm. W. Garwood, Willis V. Elliott, Horace Phelps, James H. Causey, Rodney Bard- well (who had not yet gone over to the corpora- lions) — and they got the aid of their friends. When the convention met, there was not a quorum present, but within half an hour the old Coliseum Hall began to fill and the fight commenced — on a resolution offered by ex- Judge George W. Allen* Jelegating the work of the convention to a com- mittee so that the machine might "knife" me privately behind closed doors. Costigan, Causey, Starkwejtther, Garwood, and the other young reformers held the floor against Allen, fighting for time. Delegates were pouring in from all parts of the city; the galleries were fill- ing up with cheering men, women and children. In an hour the place was jammed, a it was jammed with opponents of the machine. The "Treachery" extras of the morning newspapers had done their work, and the public enthusiasm that had "scared the wits out of the Boss" in the spring now scared the wits out of his henchmen. They lost control of the convention. It was less like a onvention, as the newspapers said, than it •Allen is now (Jan., 1910) a District Judge in Deurer. THE BEAST AT BAY 107 was like the gathering of a mob. The machine speakers were howled down, hissed and jeered. The young reformers were applauded and cheered on. The galleries hootcl and clapped. In a confusion of cat-calls and insults, Ex-judge Allen withdrew his motion; and my friends spoke for my nomination in the midst of an enthusiasm that carried all before it — in one of those waves of emotion that sometimes sweep conventions and wreck the best- contrived plans of the most astute politicians. In vain did tramway agents like C. W. Varnum try to stand against it. In vain did Mr. Fred J. Chamberlain,* a pillar of his (and IMr. Evans's) church, cry: "You fellows mustn't nominate Lindsey. You can't." They did. To the waving of handkerchiefs in the galleries, with "staid lawyers tossing their hats in the air" (as the papers said) — with Bert Shattuck withdraw- ing his nomination, and pandemonium let loose upon the angry and helpless machine men who could not make themselves heard — my nomina- tion was moved — was carried — was made unanimous — and the wild cheering of the con- vention drowned the ragtime of the brass band ! We had won again. At least we had carried the first line of the System's defence. The sec- ond fell when the Democratic Executive Com- mittee, alarmed by my apparent popularity, also »Mr. Chamberlain is now a member of the Colorado Railroad Com- miasioD, a^d Vamum of the City Civil Service Board 198 THE BEAST I' m nominated me. But the System still had the courts to appeal to. It had particularly Judge Peter L. Palmer, who had protected Cronin and the dive keepers; and on the application of Mil- ton Smith he granted a temporary injunction enjoining me from running — on the ground that my previous election was valid. (It seems impos- sible — doesn't it ? — but it is all on record in the courts of the county.) One of the attorneys in the case confessed to me: ''Ihc whole thing's fixed up. They're afraid more election protests will come into your court, and something lias to be done." When we went before Palmer to argue against making the injunction permanent, we found him closeted with the machine politi- cians; and when he mounted the bench he ren- dered his decision against us without even allowing my lawyers to open their mouths. (This was not in Russia under a Czar. It was in Colorado under the System.) The public outcry was effective. The Supreme Court reversed Judge Palmer. Another suit was promptly trumped up and 1'. 'mer granted another injunction this time, in effect, forbidding the elec- tion commissioners to print my name on the official ballot as a candidate of the conventions that had nominated me. But he was reversed again on a ruling of the Supreme Court that such suits must be brought after the elections, not before them; and I was allowed to make my campaign, the THE BEAST AT BAY 199 System meanwhile having discovered a less public way of getting rid of me. I was allowed to make my own campaign, and I took the opportunity of making another, directed against Harry A. Lindsley, who had been renom- inated »4d District Attorney, and against "Len" Rogers, a notorious election crook, whom the Democrats had put on the ticket as State Sen. ■ tor. I fought Rogers on general principles; his candidacy was an outrage to decency. I fought Lindsley because I hoped to hamstring the Beast by putting in an honest District Attorney. We succeeded in defeating both Lindsley and Rogers, but the man, George Stidger, who took Lindsley 's office, proved little better than the corruptionist whom we displaced. (He confessed to me after- ward that he, too, had been nominated by Evans, and that Evans, personally, had given him money for his campaign.) In the fight against Lindsley and Rogers all the old tricks of the Beast were used against us. False affidavits were obtained, from two unfortu- nate women of the streets, accusing me of unmen- tionable vices; but I was warned of it in advance, by a friendly physician who heard of it, and when Rogers came to my chambers to threaten the publication of this perjured slander, I was able to defy him. I had found out who the women were, and one of them had admitted her guilt. Fortunately for Rogers he went no further with t I I I flOO THE BEAST the affair. I continued to make public my know- ledge of his record, and of Lindsley's. One day Rogers, crazed with wiiiskey, came to the Court House and lay in wait for me with a loaded revol- ver in the corridor outside my chambers, but a friendly deputy sheriff (Edward G. Shaffer) came upon him there and got the revolver from him and coaxed him away. "Judge," Rogers confessed to me afterward, "Those fellows down at the Democratic Club put me up to it. They kept saying 'Len, if the little — — said things like that about me, I'd shoot him!'" (Exactly the same tactics that ended in the shooting of Heney in San Francisco!) "I got drunk, and they egged me on to it." And that poor tool, in tears, almost went down on his knees, in my chambers, to ask forgiveness for the slan- ders he had circulated ahou' ne, the attempts he made to ruin me ! Forgiveness? I could forgive him a thousand times over. I had never had anything but pity for him in my heart. But I could not forgive the men who had brought him to that posture before me — who had debased him in his own tears — a man like myself, crawling in spirit through the degradation of remorse for the crimes with which they had polluted him. O you rulers of Denver — to whom "politics is a matter of business" — this was your work! The bleed- ing Clerk in the Capitol, the poor Negro shot in THE BEAST AT BAY soi the gutter, the would-be murderer weeping over hU shame — these are among the spoils of your triumph. Let your clerks and bookkeepers write tfum down in your ledgers beside the columns of millions which thefr dishonoured lives helped you to gain. Cheesman Cheesman is dead. I wish to say nothing but good of the dead; but "the evil a man does lives after him"; and of tliat evil I propose to say noth- ing but ill. What else can I say of the part that his corporation took in the system of evil which I have described? ^Vhat else can I say of the his- tory of the Denver Union Water Company, with *«^'*^°''' °^ '*''*'* rebated, assessments reduced? What else can I say of the preparations that are now being made — this day. as I write — to force the people of Denver either to pay $14,400,000 for the water works or to grant the company a new franchise? What else can I say of the fact that after Mr. Cheesman's death, it was proposed to a complaisant City Council that our Congress Park — donated to the city by the Federal Govern- ment ana valued at a million dollars — should be named in his honour "Cheesman Park," on condition that his heirs spend $100,000 erecting a public monument to his memory there; and the City Council dedicated that public park to the private glory of this No. Let us say nothing but good of tV, dead. Let us say that on the highest point of Jorpo- 202 THE BEAST ration Park," where the view of the Rockies is most beautiful, the rulers of Denver are building a marble pavilion, with fountains and electric lights, to perpetuate the dishonour of the Beast and immortalize the success of its knaveries! Let us not join the name of the dead to this edifice of public shame. Let us see in it only a memorial to the Beast, erected by the Beast, as a mark of its power over a free community betrayed and corrupted; and seeing in it only sdch a memorial, let us realize that a monument in Washington to Benedict Arnold or to Wilkes Booth would not be a sorer insult to the sun that shines on it, the rain that wets it. Let us citizens of Denver look up at that pavilion, when we pass, as the disfran- chised patriot of a subject race looked at a Roman Arch of Triumph in his capital, with the blood of indignation swelling against the iron collar on his neck. Let us leave the dead to their rest — for- given. Our war is with the living. CHAPTER XII THE BEAST AND THE SUPREME COURT IN a republic, such as ours, where the law is the only king, "there is a divinity doth hedge" the courts; and it is right that it should be so. If our democracy is to endure, we must obey the law and respect its agents. The man who wil- fully tries to impair the public credit of our courts, when those courts are just, is the greatest traitor that our country has. But what if a court is not just? What if it does not impartially admin- ister the law, but does the bidding of a ruling fac- tion of the community, and oppresses the help- less many in the interests of the powerful few? Must we respect the corrupt priest and minister of justice who degrades his almost holy office and defiles the very temple of justice with his iniqui- ties? Must we obey the court that crushes us? Or is^ it true with courts as it is with monarchs that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God"? Throughout this story I have been careful to accuse no judge of corruption, by inference — to relate nothing of him but what I personally knew to be true. I have refrained from arguing any conclusions; I have left the facts to plead for «03 ^fl 204 THE BEAST themselves. I have particularly respected the Supreme Court of Colorado, the high altnr of jus- tice in our state; and even when the evidences of corruption there were more than arguable, I have drawn no inferences of guilt. I have waited until I had followed the trail of the Beast, step by step, from the dives to the Police Board, from the Police Board to the lower courts, from the courts to the political leaders who nominated the judges of the courts, and from the political lead- ers to the corporation magnates who ruled all. But now the trail goes one step farther. It leads from the offices of the corporations to the doors of the Capitol; it ascends the steps of the State House; it enters the sacred precincts of the Su- preme Court itself. And I propose to follow it. I thought I had seen the footprint of the Beast in the Supreme Court's decisions on our three- fourths-jury law. I thought I had seen it in the decision that protected the ballot-box stuffer who was prosecuted by the Honest Election League. I thought I had seen it in the injunction that pre- vented me from opening the ballot boxes in the spring of 1904. I thought I had seen it in 1893 when the tramway company claimed a perpetual franchise in Denver, contrary to the provision of the constitution that declared: "No law making an irrevocable grant of privileges, franchises or immunities, shall be passed by the General Assem- bly's—and Justice Luther M. Goddard first THE SUPREME COURT 205 held that the franchise was void, and then, allowed a rehearing and reversed himself! (So that the tramway company was able to sell its stocks and bonds in Wall Street on the representation that It had a franchise without limit as to time, and herefore. perpetual," in spite of the constitution, the law and the courts.) But these were merely strongly suspicious circumstances; I needed proofs hat were above suspicion. I got them in the memorable elections of the fall of 1904. Six months before, in the spring, the corpora- tions had elected Mayor Speer and his Demo- cratic machine men by ballot-box frauds that were open and admitted. But the state was nor- mally Republican ; and the corporations now u ■'id Republican .1. order to elect their candi- - to the Legislature and the governorship, lae Democrats were warned that they must not stuff the ballot boxes; and Speer in person earned the warning to the Democratic "Savages " ward heelers and election crooks — as they them- selves afterward confessed to me. The Sav ages having candidates, on the Democratic ticket, from their own ranks, took the warning with a countenance that did not promise well and before the balloting began - on the appli- cation of a corporation attorney acting ostensibly for the Republican party -the Supreme Court issued a blanket injunction enjoining the election officials from committing ballot-box frauds, and llj me THE BEAST \i ; ' Vi appointed "watchers" who were responsible to the court alone. The injunction was printed in the form of a poster and pasted up all over the city. I saw it, and read it, with amazement. Not only was it without precedent in the whole history of American juris- prudence, but it was without legislative or con- stitutional authority, and it was in contravention of all the specific provisions made by law for the conduct of elections. It was an exercise of " kingly prerogative" that was declared by lawyers and law journals to be the most amazing act of law- lessness ever committed by an \merican court. It- was done avowedly to prevent the Savages from stuffing the ballot boxes; but the Savages — as I have related "■ i previovs chapter — were not wholly intimidate^'. Some of the usual frauds were perpetrated (though in a much milder form than usual) and the Democrats carried the elec- tions. All the candidates on the Democratic county ticket were returned, excepting Lindsley and Rogers, against whom I had made a cam- paign. The Republican Governor, Peabody, was defeated for re-election. And the Senate was given a Democratic majority. Here was a dangerous slip in the plans of the corporations. A constitutional amendment had been carried, by which the number of Supreme Court justices was to be increased from three to seven. Two were to be promoted from the Court THE SUPREME COURT 207 of Appeals, but two were to be appointed. A Democratic Governor would have the appoint- ment of these, and a Democratic Senate would confirm the appointments. There was no time now to buy up the Democratic state machine, even if it could be bought in its hour of triumph. Something had to be done. It was done — and done promptly. The Supreme Court prosecuted the Savages for "contempt" and imprisoned them. Then Gabbert and Campbell — with Justice R. W. Steele dissenting — ordered that certain election precincts, in which frauds were alleged, be not canvassed; the hundreds of honest Democratic votes in these precincts were thrown out with the few dishonest ones;* and, by eliminating these votes, the Supreme Court succeeded in declaring elected three Republican State Senators, eleven Republican representatives, and the entire Repub- lican county ticket — although the returns showed that the Democrats had carried the county by majorities ranging from, two to five thousand; and even with all the "fraudulent" votes elimi- upted, the Democrats would have won. But this was not the end. The Democrats still had a majority of two in the Senate. So the State Canvassing Board, upheld by the Supreme *ln a subsequent investigation thousands of votes that had been held fraudulent by the Supreme Court on the testimony of handwriting experts were proved honest and valid by the sworn evidence of the voters who had cast them. SOS THE BEAST Ifif Court — although the Board had proptrly only clerical powers to canvass and make its report - ■ illegally threw out the returns from certain pre cincts in the counties of Boulder and Las Animas, and issued certificates of election to a number ot Republican Senatorial candidates, and so manu- factured a Republican majority in the Senate. Pardon these tiresome details. They are neces- sary to make plain how the cards were "stacked." Without them, the deal that followed would be as bewildering as sleight-of-hand. The constitutional amendment that provided for the appointment of the new Supreme Court justices expressly stated that the court so con- stituted should not come into existence until the first Wednesday in April, 1905, when Governor Peabody would have been out of office and his Democratic successor sworn in. Governor Pea~ body did not wait for the passing of April's Fool day. He su bmitted the names of the new justices to the manufactured Senate and got them confirmed. Finally — as the climax and triumphant crown of the whole conspiracy — the Supreme Court assisted the manufactured Legislature in prevent- ing Alva Adams, the Democratic governor- elect, from holding his office — although he had been elected by a plurality of more than 10,000 votes. And, after an interval of legisjative uproar, with troops ready in the Capitol and the machin- ery of government at a standstill — while the THE SUPREME COURT 209 corporations quarrelled among themselves— a sort of compromise was effected by which Adams was unseated, Peabody was declared elected, his ap- pointments to the Supreme Court were accepted, but he himself resigned in favor of his lieutenant,' Jesse McDonald. All this, no doubt, was nothing to the public but more political chicanery. I knew that it was corporation treason; and this is how I knew: At the time that Governor Peabody was con- sidering the appointment of the new judges, I happened to mention to Mr. W. G. Brown- then president of one of the Denver banks — that I intended to speak to the Governor on behalf of a friend who was seeking a place on the Supreme Court bench. "The Governor?" Mr Brown said. "Why, he hasn't anything to do with It. Don't you know the deal is to let the committee name the judges?" I asked "What committee?" "A committee," he explained, "agreed upon by the various 'interests.' " He named the men. They had been chosen, he said, by the public utility corporations of Denver, the railroads, and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. "If your friend is to have any show," he told me, "he will have to see this committee. They are 'the big ones' who will pass on his qualifications. He'll be espe- cially strong if he can get Mr. Evans's endorse- ment. He'll have to satisfy these gentlemen that 210 THE BEAST IIP he's 'right' on certain questions in which they're interested. And if he can be depended on to decide such matters 'right,' he'll he considered. Otherwise, he needn't apply. They're going to have a court they can depend on." What were these important questions in which the corporations were "interested"? The most important, Mr. Brown said, was the right of the Governor to declare martial law in case of labour disturbances so that the right of habeas corpus might be suspended and the labourers prevented from applying to the courts in defence of their liberties. And it was not Mr. Brown alone who admitted the deal with Governor Peabody. Peabody's nephew, Mr. Geo. P. Steele, was a candidate for one of these appointments, and his friends had given it out that the Governor had promised him the place. One day I met Steele on the comer of 17th and Welton streets and asked him why he had not been appointed. "Why, Ben," he said, "it vas the darndest farce you ever heard of. The corporations had him absolutely. He had to appoint Bailey and Goddard. He had to appoint whoever the corporations wanted. I wouldn't go up there unless I could go 'straight.' " Does this seem incredible? Read then the Colorado Supreme Court Reports, Volume 35, page 325 and the.-eabouts. You will find it charged that the Colorado and Southern Rail- m- THE SUPREME COURT 811 way Company, the Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company, and the public service cor- porations of Denver had an agreement with Gov- ernor Peabody whereby these corporations were to be allowed to select the judges to be appointed to the Supreme Bench. You will find it charged that Luther M. Goddard had been selected as a proper judge by the public utility corporations, but that the two railroad companies objected to him as "too closely allied with the interests of the Denver City Tramway Company and the Denver Union Water Company." "As a last resort," the statement continues, "the agent and repre- sentative of the said Colorado and Southern Rail- way Company was induced to, and did, after mid- night on Sunday, the eighth day of January, and at about one o'clock in the morning on Monday the ninth day of January, repair to the home of the said Luther M. Goddard, in a carriage, calling him out of bed, having then and there such con- versation with the said Goddard that the said rr.-'lway corporations, through their agents, with- drew their opposition to his confirmation, and they did on said morning at about three o'clock thereof announce to the remainder of tlie said corporations through their said agents and repre- sentatives, that their opposition had been with- drawn, and the withdrawal of the said opposition, having been announced, the said Senate of the Fifteenth General Assembly did, almost immedi- 212 THE BEAST ately upon its convening on the morning of Mon- day, the ninth day of January, confirm the said nomination of the said Goddard." The brief containing these charges is signed by Senator Henry M. Teller, Ex-Cabinet Min- ister and United States Senator, and by Ex-Gov- ernor Thomas mting as counsel for Senator T. M. Patterson, who had made the charges in his paper, The Rocky Mountain News. These gentle- men offered to prove the charges l)efore the court, but the court, in a most amazing decision, refused the offer, held that no matter hovy true such charges might be, it was "contempt of court" to make them, and fined Senator Patterson $1,000! Senator Patterson, rising to receive his sentence, protested against it, to the court, in one of the most scathing arraignments ever addressed to an American bench of justice. "If constructive con- tempt," he ended, "is to be maintained as it has been maintained by this court, it can simply mean . . . that we have in each of the states of the union a chosen body of men who may commit any crime, who may falsify justice, who may defy the constitution and spit upon the laws, and yet no man dare make known the facts. . . . From this time forward I will devote myself . . . to deprive every man and every body of men of such tyrannical power, of such unjust and danger- ous prerogative." His protest was no more vigorous than Justice THE SUPREME COURT 813 Steele's dissent from the decision ~ Justice Rob- ert W. Steele, the judge whom I had succeeded in the County Court — an honest man who was in the minority in so many of the corporation cases that came before the court. He has fought the {Kjople's fight for years, often single-handed, in that court; and he is still fighting. But his term of office expires in the fall of 1910, and he will have as much chance of being reelected as any other honest man who is not "right" on those "important questions" in which the corporations are "interested."* I understood why the corporations wished the Governor to have the right to declare martial law and suspend the habeas corpus in case of labour disturbances. The Cripple Creek "labour war" was being waged. I do not hi ' a brief for either the miners or the mine owners in that struggle. I do not defend the lawlessness of either. But I went to Cripple Creek at the time and talked to the laboxu-ing men and learned that they knew, as well as I did, who controlled the Supreme Court auvl Governor Peabody and the corrupt Legislature that betrayed the people. An intelligent labom-er, who had opposed the calling of the strike, said to me: "No one thing ever caused so muc h ill-feeling among the labouring men ♦No charge of corruption agaimt Judge Campbell is here made or implied. Even the labouring men during these boubles recognized that Judge Camp, bell's decisions were those of an honest prejudice, due to his training and his temperament. «14 THE BEAST LiJi of this state as what we considered the treach- ery of Judges Gabbert and Goddard in deciding against us on the eight-hour law!" (Both these judges had been "Populists" at the beginnings of their careers and had l)een first elected by the votes of the labouring men.) The strike claimed to be a strike for an eight-hour day in certain mills. The Legislature had passed an eight-hour law, but the Supreme Court, composed at that time of Campbell, Gabbert and Goddard, had declared it unconstitutional — although the Su- preme Court of the United States, in a similar case, had held ihe contrary! When the question of the validity of my election of the fall of 1904 came before the Supreme Court, my counsel argued that I had not been legally elected in the spring of 1904 — because the charter convention had no right to provide for the elec- tions of county judge, district attorney, or district judge, since these offices had been specifically ex- cepted from the jurisdiction of the charter couvm- tion by the constitutional amendment that provided for the convention. But the Supreme Court calmly held that the charter convention had no right to con- solidate any county office with a municipal office — a question that had not been brought before the court at ill in this case, except by distant implication. And the effect of this decision was to throw out of office all the Democratic county office holders who had been elected with me in THE SUPREME COURT us the .spring of 1004. They ha.l been renomi- nated and re8 ec-le,l in the fall, hut the action of the Supreme Court, in throwing out the precincts in which the Democrats had ohtaine.l their majori- ties, had given the Repuhlic.ms the offi.cs. And now these Dem,Kraf.s found themselves on the streets -the very Democrats who ha.l "mi.xed It up m the hope of lo.sing me "in the .shufHe " I was far from lest. I ha.l lH.en elected twice by both parties. If „ne election was not valid the other wa.s. If one party's pluralitv was declared fraudulent. I had still all the votes' of the other party to elect me. I could laugh at the Beast, Its frauds and its courts. But I did not feel like laughter. Some of the decision.s of the Supreme Court had alreadv had an awful result. They had had a result that not only convulsed Colorado l.ut horrified the whole civilized world. In the spring of 1904, Chas. H. Moyer, presi- dent of the Western Federation of Miners was arrested by the military authorities at Ourlv on a charge of desecrating the American flag bv using a printed representation of it in a campaign handbill He had obtained a writ of hibeS corpus from the local judge, but the military authorities m power in the strike district refused to surrender him - on the ground that his "rea- sonable further detention" was required bv "the ends of public justice and the restoration of pub- 916 THE BEAST lie tranquillity." His attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court in Denver, and the judges decided against him — all but Judge Steele again. Judge Steele held, in his dissenting opinion: "If one may be restrained of his liberty without charges being preferred against him, every other guarantee of the constitution may be denied him. When we deny to one, however wicked, a right plainly guaranteed by the constitution, we take that same right from every one. When we say to Moyer: 'You must stay in prison, because tf we discharge you, you may commit a crime,' we say that to every other citizen. When we say to one governor: 'You have unlimited and arbi- trary power,' we clothe future governors with that same power. We cannot change the con- stitution to meet conditions. We cannot deny liberty to-day and grant it tomorrow. We can- not grant it to those theretofore above suspicion and deny to those suspected of crime, for the con- stitution is for all men — 'for the favourite at court, for the countryman at plow' — at all times and under all circumstances." The corporations and their court did not think so. Having denied the labouring man his repre- sentation in the Legislature and his appeal in law, they now denied him his most elementary con- stitutional right to liberty itself. What happened ? The inevitable happened. Harry Orchard writes in his terrible autobiography: "They wanted us THE SUPREME COURT 217 to work on Judge Gabbert and see if we could not bump him off, as they were very bitter against him— especially Moyer. Judge Gabbert was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and had decided against Moyer when they brought him to Denver from Telluride on a writ of habeas corpus, when he was in the hands of the militia." And again : " They were very bitter against Judge God- dard, as they said he had written up most of the opinion in the Moyer habeas-corpus case, and had been instrumental in declaring unconstitutional the eight-hour law that had been passed by the Legislature a few years previous, when he was on the Supreme Bench before." Lawlessness had its inevitable result in lawlessness. As I walked home, one midnight, with my friend Dr. C. B. James, the city and county physician — from a performance of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" — we passed Judge Gabbert's house, and saw on the porch a man crouching, like the horrible Hyde himself, at the sill of Gab- bert's front window, while a confederate watched from the shadow of a veranda pillar. These two men — as we have since come to believe — were Harry Orchard and Steve Adams. They made off rapidly across the lawn and down the street as we approached; and after trying in vain to find a policeman we met Judge Gabbert's step- son returning home and we warned him of the burglars, as we thought they were. Some time 218 THE BEAST before this, Dr. James had received a telephone message from an unknown friend in the middle of the night telling him not to w^Ik down to the Capitol in the norning with Judge Gabbert, as had been his custom; and Orchard's confession shows that he and Adams were then planning to kill Gabbert, with a bomb, on his way to court. They killed, by accident, a man named Walley, in a vacant lot a few blocks from my house. I heard the explosion of the bomb. They planted another bomb at Judge Goddard's gate, but it did not explode. They tried to waylay and shoot Governor Peabody, but they failed. And why did they do these things ? Why were murderous outrages committed in Colorado that are only paralleled by the outrages of the revolu- tionists in despotic Russia? Because like con- ditions breed like events. The government of Russia has been described as "a despotism tem- pered by assassination"; and the government of Colorado, in the spring of 1905, was just that! The crimes of Orchard — that horrified the whole country and blackened the name of Colorado in the estimation of the world — were the inevi- table result of the crimes of the corporations that made the government of Colorado an insufferable despotism of lawless men. The crime of the oppressed is a demand for justice! From my chambers, in which I am writing now, I can look out my window and see the little shop THE SUPREME COURT 219 in which Orchard says the casings of his bombs were prepared; and from another window I can see the Majestic Building from which the cor- porations govern the state. What a government! And what an opposition! The millionaire uses his power of wealth to rob and starve and pollute a whole community with protected vice and thwarted justice and laws defied — and the exas- perated labourer, finding himself denied the com- mon rights of man, declares war against his oppressors with the bomb and the bullet! Who is the more to blame ■ the criminal who makes the conditions or the criminal who is made hy the conditions? The one goes in broadcloth to his church, sleek, smug, respected, feared for his power and honoured for his successes. The other, branded with his guilt, a moral leper by his own confession, imprisoned for life, a shuddermg hor- ror to the whole world, appeals to the same God for forgiveness Whose church the man of wealth so proudly enters — one of its "pillars," its power- ful benefactor, its generous patron, its bland com- municant. I do not presume to voice the judg- ment of Providence upon these two men. I do not even predict the decrees of human justice. But if I had to make my choice of their fates and elect between the burdens of their iniquities, I should prefer to crouch before the altar of Orch- ard's prison chapel, trembling, with all his clotted murders on my hands. ( CHAPTER XIII THE BEAST AND REFORM CJO ENDED the great conspiracy of the cor- 1904. And with the triumph of that conspiracy, the government of Colorado changed from a democracy to a plutocratic oligarchy. I saw it then; I have seen it more clearly since. I saw that the people of Colorado were not free citizens, but enfranchised serfs. They could be killed by their masters with impunity, and the jury would a political office unless he served their masters - and my own election was merely "rhe exception that proved the rule." If they rose, in mass, to vote for an eight-hour law, and the Legislature passed such a law, their masters, through the mouth of the Supreme Court, declared it Lc^n! tutional amendment permittmg such a law, their masters through the Legislature, refused to pass It. If they rebelled agamst this tyranny, and went on strike for their constitutional righJs. and were lawless ,n their opposition to lawlessness, then- masters, through the Governor, called out an THE BEAST AND REFOBt».I m ItH'!5''"'*'r'P'°^'*^ *^^ '««* P'^t^ice of justice Colorado had no more right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness " tha« a yelW dog on tJe and Lr ^"^'/^'"V" '^^ '^^'^"^ °f his master and ate scraps from his hand And it was not only that the American citizen Lehatn "^ "° "^•''^ "^ ''«'*•'>«* »»•« ".asters" masters. I had seen ,t in numerous cases that i«I T!, V° "^ '=""^- ^°' ---"Ple: a junk lead'Lt ,^^° '"P'°^'"^ '°y^ *°'*-' bis of advis!^?h''°' '""' '""^ ^^t- t^yi-g the boys I adv sed the prosecution of their employer. He retamed a corporation lawyer to defend him before shin .1'^^^ P^^" "'^^ -P'^-d to a jute! ship; and the case against him was dropped Or agam: a man was once accused in my court of he was a regular degenerate"; and his lawyer offered to plead guilty if I would put him^on probation I refused to. A new lawye was imJ^r, r"'^ Attorney -and there was an mmedmte change m the feryour of the prosecu- myestigated the charge and found no evidence agamst the man; and I was compelled, under "he law. to accept a "nolle." which amounted to a 23« THE BEAST dismissal of the case. This sort of thing pre- vailed even in divorce suits. It prevailed in every sort of suit that a corporation lawyer could be retained to defend before a corporation judge. Just as the king's favourites in France, before the Revolution, were free to commit any outrage upon the citizens who had no court influence, so, in Colorado, the favourite who wore the livery of the corporations — or was able to retain a favourite who did — could spit upon the freeman, could debauch the son of the freeman, could violate the daughter of the freeman, and then appeal confi- dently to the corporation ministers of justice to pro- tect him. Our boasted ' ' government of the people, for the people and by the people" had passed away. Does this seem an intemperate statement of the facts ? I hope not. It would distress me to have any one suspect me of impatience. I am trying to relate my experiences, in the Jungle, with the Beast, as dispassionately as possible, without any colour of prejudice, coolly, for the benefit of those of you who live sheltered private lives, purred to in prosperity. I do not raise my voice. If I say that you are not a citizen of a democracy *: it a sort of enfranchised house slave of an oligarchy of cor- porate wealth, I say it, believe me, in the politest tone conceivable. It is merely a condition which I wish you to recognize. If, after you have recog- nized it, you are still content to sit by your fire- side and leave politics to your mcsters, at least THE BEAST AND REFORM 223 you can do so without having been unnecessarily annoyed. If the democracy is to die, by all means let it die decently, with resignation, on a feather bed. Let it not mrke a noisy finish, like a stuck pig, dragged from its comfortable pen and pros- perity's full hog trough, to have its throat cut, squealing shrilly, while the rest of the world jeers. In the spring of 1905, I admit, I was not so philosophical. I had just come through a hot campaign and my blood was still intemperate. I was prepared to stir up an insurrection among my fellow-serfs, and I believed that such an insur- rection could be made successful. I had not been, for so long, an opponent of the Beast without having learned the sources of its power. I had seen that whenever it was attacked in its jungle, it took refuge up a tree. I believed that we could fell that tree, with the animal in its top — bring the brute down, stunned by its fall — and dis- patch it where it lay, before it could recover. In other words, I had seen that the corporations derived their power from their control of politics, and that they controlled politics largely through the election laws. If we could reform the election laws so as to make the will of the people effective, we could overturn the throne of the plutocracy and have the king sprawling at the feet of his subjects. After that, we could make what terms with him we pleased. 224 THE BEAST * .1 1 as^ We needed, first of all, a registration law to pre- vent ballot-box stuffing, so that Boss Evans might not have voters "good for 500 votes" each, while the people had only voters of a vote apiece. Then, if we could get a real Australian ballot law, with a headless ballot — so that the people might be able to vote for candidates instead of parties — we would make it possible for an independent man to succeed in an independent campaign, and prevent Boss Evans from using the name of Roosevelt or Bryan to elect a ticket of corrup- tionists. Next, with an effective direcv ^rimary law, we could abolish the machine caucus and convention — in which the corporations choose the candidates for whom the people are to be allowed to vote — make it possible for the voters to choose their own representatives and free the honest politician from the necessity of going to Big Steve, or Boss Speer, or any other corpora- tion favourite, for permission to aspire to a poli- tical office. And finally, with a "corrupt prac- tices act," we could limit campaign expenses, make it unnecessary to appeal to the wealthy corporations for contributions, and make it pos- sible for an independent candidate to compete against a party man without mortgaging his house or selling his independence. In short, what we most needed — and do still need — was not laws against trusts and corpora- tions, limiting their powers and restraining their THE BEAST AND REFOR^VI 225 activities, but laws for the people, permitting them to use their power and restoring to them the tools of democracy, which the corporations have taken from them. It is useless to agitate for "govern- ment control of trusts" as long as the trusts are able, through our machinery of elections, to con- trol the government that is to control them. Once let us regain control of our legislatures, our courts and our public officials — by regaining control of the process of electing them — and we shall have the corporations where the sans-culottes had King Louis and his favourites before the Reign of Terror. Then 'ware the figurative guillotine! With this pleasing prospect in my hope, I began to work on a series of Ijjlls to reform the election laws, and I began to stir up a popular demand for such laws by means of public speeches, newspaper articles and the like. And because this same campaign will have to be fought in every state in the union in which it has not yet been fought, I wish to chronicle it here in sufficient detail to explain the tactics that were used against us, the methods by which we succeeded and the reasons for which we failed. We opened fire in the newspapers — and espe- cially in the Denver Post, through a clever edito- rial writer named Paul Thieman who had given me a vital aid in my two previous election con- tests. The Post was then as independent as a highwayman. One of its proprietors, H. H. 226 THE BEAST 'i . -! 1 Tammen, had begun life as a barkeeper, and h« would himself relate how he had made money by robbing his employer. " When I took in a dollar," Tammen said, " I tossed it up — and if it stuck to the ceiling, it went to the boss." He had a frank way of making his vices engaging by the honesty with which he confessed them; and he had boasted to me of the amount of money the news- paper made by charging its victims for suppress- ing news-stories of a scandalous nature in which they were involved: He admitted that he sup- ported me merely because it was "the popular thing to do" — it "helped circulation." I knew it was a very precarious support, although the editorial writer, Paul Thieman, seemed to me an honest and public-spirited young man. The Rocky Mountain iwa, the oflBcial organ of the Democratic partv, also aided us. (It was owned by Senator Patterson.) But there was a wing of the Democratic party for which it could not speak — the corporation machine faction led by Boss Speer — and I had yet to learn how strong tha faction was. The Denver Republican, of course, w»j not in our camp; it is a corporation organ simply. But the Republicans were not unwilling to have the popularity of the children's court t: an asset of their ticket, and their paper did not openly oppose our reform of the election laws. There, then, were the three typical newspapers THE BEAST AND REFORM 2«7 of a typical American city; and we had two of them with us and one preserving a sort of armed neutrality. After a preliminary cannonade of articles and editorials, ou- reform bills were given to Senator W. W. Booth, whom we had elected by defeating "Len" Rogers; and Senator Booth introduced them in the Senate. This immediately "developed" the position of the corporation tools in the Legislature. The Republican sub-boss, George Graham, held a par- ley with Senator Booth, and Booth reported to us: "They say there's absolutely no hope for the direct primary law or the Massachusetts ballot. Neither party organization will stand for it. But there's been a big fuss about padded registration in Denver and in Pueblo, and something may have to be done in that matter for fear the party will be injured. I think we can get them to give us a show to put through the registration reform, but they say that if I try to pass the other two bills, they'll not even let us have the registration law." I understood, of course, that the "they" who spoke were the corporation representatives. The Democratic chairman, Milton Smith, and other Democrats, like Senator Billy Adams, always faithful to the public-service corporations, opposed the bills as stubbornly as the Republicans did. The corporation lobbyists worked with a will against them. William R. Freeman, a corpora- tion lobbyist whom I met one day on the street. 228 THE BEAST said frankly, in reply to my arguments for a reform of the election laws: "Yes, they do give us the power to rule the people, but why shouldn't we have it? You know the corporations give this state good government. Look what Speer has done for Der, > or. Suppose the corporations have got millions of dollars' worth of franchises; they kiio'v how to use them and the people don't. Now be honest! You know the people aren't fit to govern themselves. If the corporations of this state didn't do it for them, what kind of a state would we have'" He pointed to some work- ingmen digging in the street. "Do you think we are going to be ruled by a lot of cattle like that ? \Vliat do they know about government ? No, sir. We rule, and we're going to continue to!" Freeman was frank. The men in the Legisla- ture were not. They had been elected by the votes of "the people not fit to govern themselves" and it was necessary to add hypocrisy to treason. The bills were referred to committees and the doors of silence were locked on them. We bat- tered at the doors. Thus far the corporations had been apparently on the defensive, entrenched and silent; and we were preparing to push the assault, when sud- denly we discovered a flank movement that tad been weeks afoot and was now sweeping in tri- umphantly upon us. In the very first days of the session my old law partner, whom I have called THE BEAST AND REFORM 229 Senator "Gardener," had introduced two bills that would have made my |)r- :»ion as County Judge untenable, and one of tl > lis had almost passed the Senate before I knew that it had bcon even introduced. They provided that County Judges in counties of the first class (which referred only to Denver) should not be permitted to leave the city except in July, and should not be allowed to call in a judge to assist in the work of the County Court. It was humanly impossible for one man to do the work of my court, and Gardener and his corporation masters knew it. We were forced temporarily to use all our efforts in the Legislature to defeat these "spite bills," and we were put on the defensive thereby. It is an old trick of the Beast, but an effective one. The newspapers came to our rescue; the women held meetings in their clubs; the boys marched through the streets with banners; and Senator Gardener found himself beaten upon by a storm of public abuse that has marked him for life. The people, though they did not yet see the Beast, saw that the Juvenile Court was in danger, and rallied at once to the support of a "moral issue." (Woman's suffrage in Colorado has done that, at least, for our politics.) The women packed the legislative committee rooms at the Capitol when r spoke against the bills; and the House did not dare to pass them. A few days before this, while I was at luncheoA 230 THE BEAST in a restaurant, Mr. R. D. Thompson — the law- yer under whom Gardener and I had served our apprenticeship — came to the table at which I sat and gave me a warning from Gardener. If, (Gardener had said) I dared to say anything pub- licly that would reflect on him or any of his friends they would "spend a thousand dollars in circu- lating a story" that would ruin me in the estima- tion of the women, and end my career. " Well," I said, " what the deuce does he mean ?" Mr. Thompson replied: "I don't know. He didn't tell me any more than that — and he said I'd better tell you, because they believe you're going to go before the House at the hearing on these bills and make some statements reflecting on him — something that he did, which you claim is the animus behind these bills." I knew, then, that Gardener referred to the visit he had made to me in my home and his request that I should "job" the Springer election contest for him. I went straight to Gardener's oflSce to demand what he meant by his threat. He was not in. I wrote him a letter and told him that if he knew anything reflecting on my character it was his duty to make it public, and I released him from every confidential or friendly obligation to conceal it. He wrote in reply that he knew noth- mg against me, and he denied having made the threat. This was all very well. But he continued to THE BEAST AND REFORM 231 circulate his slanders. He poured them into the ear of Senator William L. Clayton, for example, and Senator Clayton repeated them to me. They came to the knowledge of my brother and my friends. It was evident that the Beast had turned "polecat" again. I went to the news- papers and gave them the whole story of Garden- er's attempt to influence me into jobbing the elec- tion cases and I challenged him to substantiate any of his slanderous charges against me. In other words, I set the dogs of publicity upon the Beast and drove it to its burrow. Do you think I was done with it, then ? Gentle reader, you do not know the "animal." Slander is one of its choicest and most efifective weapons. Come to Denver to-day and hear some sweet and motherly little woman, at her dinner table, among her children, tell you, "Yes, I voted for Judge Lindsey — in spite of his private life." Abomin- able stories about me, circulated privately, are privately believed, despite the fact that there is not a corporation crook in Denver who would not dance with joy if he could find the slightest evi- dence on which to base a charge of immorality against me. My private life has been gone over with a microscope. I have been followed by detectives. Faces have peered in my library win- dow at night when I have been sitting there, talking with friends. My chambers in the Court House have been broken into, my desk drawers ■4-31 232 THE BEAST forced open, and my letter files searched. Bribes have been offered the officers of my court to find or manufacture evidence of my moral turpitude. Nothing has been found on which the harpies could build even a presumption of guilt that would endure the tight. And yet the slanders circulate! I have proof, too, that they are deliberately circulated. In 1904, when I was opposing the election of "Len" Rogers and District Attorney Lindsley, Paul Thieman, of the Post, came upon a young brood of ^anderous lies that had been hatched out at the Democratic Club. He spoke to a politician about them. " You know Judge Lindsey," he said. "You don't really believe those stories, do you ?" "No," the politician replied, "but we've got to get the little some way. There'll be a lot of people believe them." And he described how some sensitive reformer in San Francisco — whose name I have forgotten — had been over- whelmed by just such calumnies. If this method of attack were peculiar to the Beast in Denver, I should not refer to it here. But do you know'what stories were told of District Attorney Jerome in New York, of Senator La Fol- lette in Wisconsin, of Governor Folk in Missouri, of Heney in San Francisco and even of President Roosevelt ? O you citizens of the United States — who are "not fit to govern" yourselves — the manufacture and circulation of these stories is THE BEAST AND REFORM 233 one of the operations of the powers that govern you. It is this defilement that has helped to make our politics so dirty. It is your credence of these lies that has made the honour of public office so often a garment of torture to the man who wears it. Beware your Beast when it turns "pole- cat"! Remember always that if there was a word of honest evidence on which to defend these stories, they would be printed in every corpora- tion newspaper in the country! Well, we defeated Senator Gardener's spite bills and turned again to our campaign of reform; and by this time it was evident that we could hope for no more than the passage of our registration law. The other bills were pigeonholed in committees, guarded by corporation representatives like the Democratic Senator "Billy" Adams, who has sat for more than twenty years in our Senate, sunken- lipped, glint-eyed, with the beak of a buzzard, waiting silently like an old scald-head hawk to pounce upon any reform measure that threatens the "plum tree" of the corporations. But our registration bill apparently had a chance of becoming law. It passed along quietly through the Senate — to my amazement — a little muti- lated now and then by an amendment, but still effective. I watched its course with interest, puz- zled by its success. I began to hope that the public outcry against the ballot frauds had put the lear of the popular wrath into the hearts of 2S4 THE BEAST MM the machine politicians. And certamly the outcry had been loud. We had defeated the Democratic candidate for District Attorney in Denver, and elected a Republican, who had instituted a vigor- ous prosecution of the Democratic "stuffers." In Pueblo, the Republican District Attorney had been defeated, and a^Democratic District Attorney was prosecuting the Republican " stuflFers." The public wfis applauding both. The henchmen and ward heelers and even some sub-bosses of both parties were in danger of the penitentiary; and on the wave of this "reform movement" our new law seemed to be borne gaily a'ong. And then the mystery was explained to me by Senator W. W. Booth. He had discovered that the two corporation bosses had come together and agreed "to swap prisoners." Our registration bill had a clause that repealed the old registration law "save and except as to all violations thereof and prosecutions pending thereunder"; and when the bill came up for the final vote, this "saving clause" was struck out. I hastened at once to see Governor McDonald, explained the plot to him, and besought him, upon receiving the mutilated bill, to return it to the Legislature with a message exposing this premedi- tated jail delivery and demandbg the reinstate- ment of the "saving clause." He replied calmly that the facts were probably as I had related — tha' he had been so advised from other sources. THE BEAST AND REFORM 235 (The District Attorney in Pueblo had telegraphed him that the passage of the amended bill would free some 200 ballot-box stuffers against whom there were indictments.) But he said: "You can't get the law, in my judgment, unless you get it m this way." And we had to take what we could get. The ballot-box stuffers immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, under the new law, for a stay in the proceedings against them. The judges decided that the passage of the new law repealed the old one, and they held that since the clause save and except as to all violations thereof" had been stricken out - and a repeal of all penalties for crimes thereunder deliberately inserted — it was no doubt the intention of the Legislature to grant a pardon to the criminals. We lost the thieves, but we got the instrument against them- and it has been effective. Billy Green, the noto- rious election crook, has since bom unwilling testimony to that effect. In districts ^ here there had been 5,000 voters registered in the old days, less than 1,000 were now on the books. The corporations had lost their voters "good for 500 votes apiece," and the people of Colorado were one step nearer freedom. I was elated. We had not only forced a reform, but it proved practical; and of all our bills the registration measure was the only one of whose effect there had been any question. Our direct 286 THE BEAST primary law was after Senator La Follette's ideas, some of which had been adopted in Wisconsin. The headless ballot law had shown its strength in Massachusetts. If we could get those two laws, now, we should be able to hear Lincoln's Gettysburg address read in Colorado without turning pale. CHAPTER XIV A CITY PILLAGED TTAVE I convinced you yet? Do you still M. X think I am crying "Wolf! Wolf!" when there is no wolf, or do you believe that we indeed do have our fabled dragon, to which some of us are daily sacrificed - that lives upon us -that the daughters of the poor are fed to, no less than the sons of the rich? Or do you think that it is. after all, a rather harmless brute whom some of us m Colorado have goaded to a natural rage — a domestic animal properly — a milch cow, per- haps, that has to have its fodder but repays us in the rich cream of prosperity ? Do you agree with the candid Freeman that government by corpora- tions is not so bad a thing ? Then let me - before I proceed with the story of our struggle for a reform of our election laws - let me add one more instance of what that kind of government entails. Let me ,7J:i *' l^^'^'"" ™y court room in the spring of 1906. Let me put you on the bench there to judge It, and decide. Under the constitutional amendment that had granted the city of Denver in 1902 the right to make its own charter, it had been provided that U7 238 THE BEAST the citizens should dispose of franchises to public service corporations by the direct vote of the tax- paying electors, and not, as in the past, through the City Council. In 1906 the Denver Gas and Electric Company applied for a franchise for twenty years, and the tramway company applied for an extension of some of its franchbes, without, however, waiving its claims to a perpetual fran- chise. The gas company wished also the power to take over the electric plant of a local company that by its charter oould not sell except to the city; and the Denver and Northwestern Railroad wished an entrance to the city and a right of way. For these monopoly rights in the streets of Denver nothing was offered to the citizens of Denver except by the gas company, which agreed to pay $50,000 per annum, and by the street railway company, which engaged itself to pay the city $60,000 a year on condition that a certain part of the money be spent on the public parks and for park amusements (to which, of course, the tramway company would carry the crowds!). These franchises were voted upon in the spring elections. Before election H ■ it began to be freely charged that in the oflSces the County Asses- sor and the County Treasurti, where the lists of tax-paying electors were being made up, great numbers of citizens were being assessed upon triv- ial articles of personal property, so that they might be qualified to vote. It was charged, loo. A CITY PILLAGED 2S9 that "fake" tax receipts were being issued to employees of the utility corporations. And a league of citizens, through their lawyers, at once applied to the District Court (Judge Frank T. Johnson'*') for a writ similar to that issued by the Supreme Court in 1904 against the "Savages," to prevent election frauds. Judge Johnson held that if the Supreme Court could grant such a writ the District Court could do the same. He issued it. The elections were held, and on the face of the returns the franchises were granted. But the majority in favour of the grant was very small — ninety-nine for the tramway franchise and about five hundred for the gas franchise on the official recount. The tax-receipt frauds were evi- dent. Hundreds of votes had been cast upon taxes of a few cents levied on almost worthless land that lay out on the prairies. And the league of citizens, under Judge Johnson's writ, applied for an investigation in his court. He decided to hold it. Subpoenas were issued to the boys who had voted on the "ten-cent" tax receipts and to the woman in the Treasurer's office who had made out these receipts. The woman promptly fled ttom twvn. The County Treasurer rose from his sick bed to deny responsibility for having *Jud{(e Jofaiuon did his duty to the community bravely in these cases. The System crushed him at the next election. 240 THE BEAST issued the receipts, discharged the chief clerk under whose instructions the work had been done, collapsed m his ofiBce and died that same after- noon at his home. It was charged that more than 2,000 fraudulent receipts had been issued. It was proved that the receipts had been isi^ued wholesale and distributed among the clerks of the gas company office. The clerks, called to the witness stand, either perjured themselves by swear- ing that they had bought the land through Mr. Frank W. Freuauff of the gas company, or practically confessed their guilt by refusing to testify lest they might incriminate them- selves — a privilege that every crimmal has under the law. Does this sound merely technical? Ah, you should have been in that court and watched those poor boys — honest sons of good families, who had been driven at the bidding of their employers to commit a crime — standing there before the bar of justice, admitting their shame while their wives and mothers watched with tears in their eyes. You should have heard them floundering through their perjuries, red-faced and guilty, while the officers of the gas company watched them with a cynical smile. And you should have seen Henry L. Doherty, president of the gas company, when he was called to the stand and refused to testify — refused to do for him- self what he had let these boys do for him — and A CITY PILLAGED 241 with a contemptuous sneer on his face denied the jurisdiction of the court and would eive no evidence before it. That court represented the sovereign power of the people. But Henry L. Doherty was protected by the sovereign power of the Beast. That court had the right under the law to hear the case and give judgment upon it; and the question of Its jurisdiction should then have been decided upon appeal. But Henry L. Doherty had the lawless power of the Beast to smile at court procedure, to despise law, and to teach anarchy by example. Judge Johnson sentenced him for con- tempt. He went out smiling in the custody of a deputy sheriff. One of his attorneys rushed to the telephone and called up the Clerk of the Supreme Court and said in the voice of a man talkingto his office boy, "Hurry up with that writ." Doherty made a triumphal descent of the Court House staircase, smiled at by the crowds in the halls, as if he were the hero of some huge practi- cal joke that was admirable in its insolence; and he was taken by the Sheriff to a neighbouring hotel where he waited until Judge Gabbert directed his release under a writ of habeas corpus — a proceeding which the Supreme Court itself after- ward repudiated as illegal. However, the Supreme Court granted a tempo- rary writ restraining Judge Johnson from proceed- ing with his investigation; and later, a majority 24S THE BEAST of the judges of the Court made that v rit perma- nant and so held that Judge Johnson had no right to do for the people in 1906 wLut the Supreme Court had done — for whom ? — in 1904. Judges Steele and Gunter dissented. They held that though the action of the Supreme Court in 1904 was "without precedent" and "not based upon any recognized rule of juity jurisprudence," it was "nevertheless, until reversed, the law of this state." They held that the decision of the Supreme Court in 10O4 declared that it was "iu the power of a court of equity to supervise elections by injunction." They held that the Supreme Court could not claim such a right for itself and deny the same right to the District Court, for by doing so the Supreme Court "arrogates to itself an exclusiveness expressly disavowed in many other opinions and assumes a superiority denied it by the constitution." The other judges over- rode this dissent. They did not propose to strain at a gnat after having swallowed a camel. They denied Judge Johnson's jurisdiction, and his investigation collapsed. Balked there, the league of citizens applied for a grand jury investigation; but since their com- plaint alleged a conspiracy of the corporations to buy up and control both parties in the elections, the League asked the appointment of a special Sheriff and a special District Attorney on the case. Judge Mullins granted the investigation, and A CITY PILLAGED 243 appointed officers >a j 'ace of the suspected Sheriff and District Attorney Stidger. Another appeal was taken to the Supreme Court, and the Court again inter vniied and stopped the proceedings, on the ground that the Sheriff and the District Attor- ney could not be displaced — in the face of Justice Steele's dissenting opinion, that the case came "within the doctrine .mnounced in the People vt. District Court, 29 Colorado, 5, where the right of the Distiict Jud£^ to appoint a special officer to advise th>" Grand Jury whenever he has reason to believe, from information which he con- siders reliable, that crimes have been cou rn>*»ed and that the office rs' conduct in conneoU'u! th-n;- with is such that it should be in. ; ^igatcd. is expressly confirmed." The franchise investigation was ("n i iy invijght before me. As judge of the Count. ( oui-., i ' ; ■; the right, under the charter, "to hear i\\\ < i,i:i a contests." The lawyers for the corporations filed affidavits charging me with prejudice and demand- ing a change of venue. I refused to grant it. An appeal was taken to Judge Malone of the District Court, and the corporation lawyers argued there that I had no jurisdiction. "Some of the counsel for the petitioners," Judge Malone said in his decision, "were frank enough to tell the Court that they did not think there was any court that had jurisdiction to consider, investigate or pass upon the validity of the franchises m question. 244 THE BEAST or as to whether they were lawfully carried. They say that there having been no court or tribunal established or named for the purpose, there is a radical defect in the legislation upon the subject, which can only be corrected by further legislation. . . . I cannot believe this to be true." He resolved the doubt in the case in favour of the people, and held that the County Court had the right tu hear the contest. He has since admitted that he had been warned that if his decision went against the corporations he could not be renom- inated to the bench; and he has not been renomi- nated! The case before me continued. There con- tinued also a fv>neral exodus from Denver that became one of i; «. .. jokes of the newspapers. " Bill " Evans, president of the tramway company, had gone East. Frsuauff, the manager of the gas company, had taken an early train. "Bill" Davoren, chairman of the Democratic City and County Central Committee had flown, and a friend of hb came to my chambers to ask that I grant him immunity on the promise that the organization would back me as a candidate for the Governorship. Scores of young clerks made off, their travelling expenses paid (as some of them have since confessed to me) by the gas company. The mothsrs of others — or their wives — came to my chambers with pitiful tales of poverty and lack of employment, and told me that their sons A CITY PILLAGED 84« or their husbands had been compelled to cast fraudulent votes or lose the work on which they depended for their daily bread. (The victims of the Beast!) One of the guilty clerks was the son of the Bishop of one of Denver's churches, and I was besought for the sake of his father, for the sake of the congregation, for the sake of religion and public decency, not to put him on the witness stand. (He finally escaped the process server and got out of town.) A young man came to con- fess to me that he had committed perjury in Judge Johnson's court, believing that the corporations would "square it"; "for," he said, "it's been common talk that the corporations control the Supreme Court and wouldn't let us get mto trouble." All day m my chambers, every eve- ning in my home, these trembling slaves of corpora- tion government besieged me with their petitions for clemency; and the pitiful guilt and moral degradation of it all made life a nightmare. These people were not the "lower classes" of the slums whom you are accustomed to think of as born to shame and suffering. They were not the work- mg men who are "cattle" to such as Freeman, and in his opinion "not fit to govern them- selves." They were those whom you, "gentle reader," are accustomed to consider as good as yourself. And yet they were dragged through the mire of fraud and perjury just as you and your children and your wives and your mothera I «4» THE BEAST will be dragged, if the Beast m your commu- nity ever finds the need to drag you. Never doubt it! The case continued. Party workers were put on the stand and admitted that they had received money from the party organizations and had voted for the franchises. The clerks and their wives who had voted on the fraudulent tax- receipts either refused to testify lest they should incriminate themselves, or perjured themselves so flagrantly that the court was compelled to warn them. Scene* similar to those that I had watched in Judge Johnson's court were repeate<] in mine; and Henry L. Doherty, and those of his fellow-officials who had not suc- ceeded in getting out of town, smiled as they listened. Then, in order to prove that the money paid by the political organizations to their workers had come from the corporations, Doherty was ordered to the witness stand. He refused to testify. With his arms crossed, backed by his lawyers, he denied the jurisdiction of the court and silently dared us to punish him. I pointed out to him, mildly, that the question of the jurisdiction of the court was one to be set- tled by appeal from the judgment of the court in the case; that no citizen had the right to interrupt court proceedings by such an arbitrary defiance as his. And I fined him $500 and sentenced him A CITY PILLAGED 247 to imprisonment in the County Jail until he should decide to testify. I passed the same sentence on Mr. Fred Wil- liams, chairman of the Republican City and County Committee, on the president of the *-lection Commission, and on Mr. J. Cooke Jr who followed Doherty's example. They reflected h.s amured smile. He was not only president of the gas company in Denver, but he was (or had been) president of gas or electric companies m Madison, Wis., Lincoln, Neb., Quebec Cwada. Milwaukee, Wi.s., Grand Rapids. Alich ' bt. Paul, Minn., Binghamton. N. Y., San Antonio' Tex., and St. Joseph. Mo. JiU- crossed his arms on his importance and defied the law. I summoned the Deputy Sheriff ("Ed" G. Shaf- fer) and warned him that the court's order must be obeyed, that Doherty must go to jail and that if any special privileges were granted to him or the other prisoners I would punish for contempt of court any officer that granted such privileges. Ihe corporation lawyers interposed with a request that I merely leave Doherty in the custody of the sheriff till writs could be obtained to free him pendmg an appeal. I refused the request. They asked, then, that I suspend sentence until they could get up the record of the case on which the writs had to be obtained. I refu.sed that request also. ^ If any poor man came to this court," I said,' and refused to be swom.no such privijen^s W MB THE BEAST as you ask for would be granted him. I have never known any one to show such contempt for a court as this man has. I refuse to stop the court proceedings so thai the Clerk of the Court may write up the record. The defendant will get strict justice from this court and no more." By this time Doherty's smile was more defiant but less contemptuous. He went out, in charge of the deputy, with the expression of face that I have seen a hundred times upon the incorrigible bad boys who had been sentenced in the Juve- nile Court. He went to jail; and he and his fellows were entered on the warden's books with a prisoner who was held on a charge of muffder. There — judging from the newspaper pictures of him behind the bars — his smile rather faded. The county jail was not built to Tumish million- aires with luxury. The cells are clean but bare; the bars are tastefully painted with aluminum paint; the floors are made of iron plate filled with rivets ; the beds are hammocks that are not slung until nightfall; when the prisoner wishes to sit down, he sits on the floor. Doherty remained there while the court record was being prepared. The Clerk took no more time than usual with that record — but no less. And if the reports that came to me are to be believed, Mr. Doherty became rather angry, a,s i A CITY PILLAGED 249 night followed day, and day night, and no writ arrived to free him. He expressed a very low opinion of his lawyers. He was, I believe, the first and only trust magnate in this country who ever found himself in such a pitiable situation; and his indignation was natural. He remained there dunng three days and two nights, before a new act of court lawlessness freed him. The Supreme Court was on its vacation, and a single judge was unable to stay the pro- ceedings of a lower court. The only action a smgle Supreme Court judge could take was the granting of a writ of haljeas corpus; and, under the ruling of the court in the pre- vious case in Judge Johnson's court, a writ of habeas corpus was not the proper remedy in contempt cases. But there was still sitting in the District Court the notorious Judge Peter L. Palmer; and Judge Palmer issued a writ of habeas corpus freeing Doherty and his associates on the ground that the Sui)reme Court was not in session. Judge Palmer had no more right to issue such a writ than one of the gas company's office boys. He was as lawless, in doing so, as Doherty had been in refusing to testify. I immediately ordered the Sheriff to recapture his prisoners and return them to my court. But they had fled. "I have searched the entire city," the Sheriff reported, "but I can find none of tht-ra." The newspapers found wo THE BEAST Doherty m Lincoln, Nebraska, safely beyond the jurisdiction of the court. The others remained in hiding until the Supreme Court met and decided substantially that though my court, under the charter, had been granted jurisdiction in all cases of contested elections, the franchise investigation was not such a case and the legislature had not specifically empowered the court to hear franchise cases.* I have written all this as baldly as possible, so as to have the facts before you uncoloured by prej- udice. But do you realize what these facts mean .' Do you realize that the citizens of Denver, robbed of millions of dollars by a franchise steal, found themselves in 1906 with no court under heaven to which they could appeal for redress ?t Do you realize that the robbers, caught in the act, were able to laugh at their victims and defy the law ? Can you consider what an example of citizenship was set for those young men and women who were compelled to betray their city, to perjure themselves on an oath before their •A ridiculoiw quo wamnlo suit wu lubsequenUf pivaeculed by District Attorney Slidger (!) before Judge Peter L. Fklmer (!). Do I need to ny that the result of tluit suit was favorable to the coiporations ? tWe bad a bill introduced in the Legislature of lOW providing that the county court could adjudicate upon franchise election contests. The bill was defeated by the corporation reprcaenutives. Now, under their con- lenlions — already sustained in part by the decision of the Si^mme Court of 11)08. in the cue liefore Judfje Malone — a corporation thtf has obtained a iianchise by whainer bfibery, corruption, or ballot frauds, cannot have iU right to that f n ii wh i sf Isgally ooBtertnl in Cotondol « A CITY PILLAGED 261 God, and to see Doherty and his associates smile upon this treason and this perjury? Doherty — the millionaire president of a score of power companies, rich, honoured, admired! Freuauff, the manager of the Denver Gas Com- pany, ex-treasurer of the Board of Deacons of the Central Presbyterian Church, an active relig- ious worker, a most "respectable" man! Wil- liams, chairman of a great party committee, ex-superintendent of a Sunday School in the Central Presbyterian Church ! Who may not be the victims of the Beast in your city when such men as these are its active agents in onm? Nor was this all. Months after the court investigations ended, Mr. Freuauff kw4 — or had stolen from him — -iome page.s of the memo- randum book in which he had kept an account of his briberies. Those pages were published in facsimile in Senator Patterson's paper, the Denver Times. They were in Freuauff's hand- writing and he never repudiated them. They showed that he had corrupted tin- political workers of both parties in the fraschise elec- tions, that he had bribed candidates of both parties, that he had paid Mayor Speer $4,500, had spent $3,551 on newspapers, had given $550 in church contributions, had paid Judge Gavin $400, the president of the Board of Supervisors $1,600, the State Oil Inspector $4,490, the Commissioner of Supplies $300, the •■• THE BEAST Oty Clerk *W)0. "Len" Rogers $256, Soetje, M election commLssioner, $200, Julius Aichele, former county clerk, $670 — and, b short, on the evidence ol tlH>se five pages of memoranda, had used W.«»0 to corrupt the guardians and sentries uid officers of the public, so that the corpor«lppesl of thi> cue now pending in the Federal Court of Ap|M-.l. (Jan.. I»10) the ipecid attorney for the dly is Mr. N. Waller Oiion. who 11 *bo attomev for Mr. Ey»n>. prendeut of the Uamway company, in pnyate litigalian! '^" 254 THE BEAST Doherty and Freuauff have announced a plan to reorganize with a bond issue of $25,000,000 and "a stock reorganization at a hiter date." The amount of the stock issue de[>pnds, in the language of the railroad, upon how much the traffic will bear. The Denver Union Water Company, piping water into the city from the mountains, from great watersheds and water rights belonging to the people — and conceded to the company without any reservations to the people of their rights — charges three times as much for its service as the citizens of Boulder, for example, pay for theirs. Surely, as the frank Mr. Freeman, said, "the corporations give this state good govern- ment." They give us a government that is an outrage, and charge for it a price that is a robbery. It is a robbery, and duly declared so by the Supreme Court of the United States. That court, in the case of Wilcox vs. Consolidated Gas Com- pany (of New York City), decided that the rates charged by a public utility corporation must be suflScient to pay a reasonable return on the "prop- erty devoted to the public use" — not on the watered stock, not on the probable value of the franchise and the "good will" of the business, but on the valuation of the physical plant. It decided that a reasonable return in New York City for a gas plant is 6 per cent. Under this ruling — which Ls the law of the land — the Den- A CITY PILLAGED 235 yer Gu and Electric Company should be charg- ing the citizens of Denver not more than per cent, on the actual value of its pl.ml instead of a sum that has yielded over 20 per cent, on stocks. The Tramway Company should be charging not more than per cent, on $7,300,000, instead of seeking to extort from the peo,>lc a suf- ficient sum to yield interest on $40,000,000. But of what avail is the law when the robbers so often control the officers and the courts that should enforce tue law. and control thcni for the express purpose of preventing its enforcement? Here is the secret of the Beast, its first cause and its final reason for being. It rules to rob. It must rule in order to rob. And as long as it rules, it will continue to rob. Mayor Speer. on the night More his last elec- tion, officially opened an electric fountain in City Park. A crowd of fifteen thousand people (of whom the tramway company had taken its usual toll) applauded the sky-high spurt of water glit- tering like fireworks in the glow of coloured lights; and on all sides, when the first shouts of delight had subsided, there sounded the heartiest praises of Mayor Speer for what he was doing for Denver. He was reelected. Some day, let us hope, an electric fountain will be dedicated in City Park to the memory of that well-meaning and unfortu- nate County Treasurer who, when he found how his office had been corrupted at the time of the I Midocorr DESoiurKm ibt chakt (ANSI and ISO lEST CHABT No. 2) M2S 13.2 |2J [ |I2£ 12.0 1.8 1.25 ^ APPLIED ilVMGE li ^R 165] East Main Street y-g RoctiBlt«r, Ntv fori, U609 USA -^ (716) 482 - 0500 - PHc"e ^S (716) _aa - 5989 - Fa« ««« THE BEAST franchise steal, died of the disgrace. It should bear the inscription: "To the civic official of Denver who died of shame. Erected by the others who have only blushed themselves into msensibility." As the philosopher said: "There are times when one laughs that he may not weep!" CHAPTER XV THE BEAST, THE CHURCH AND THE GOVEENOBSHIP rpilE investigation of the franchise vote had X had one hopeful issue: it proved that the corporation ballot-box stuffers were afraid of the teeth of our new registration law. Behind every vote that we counted there was a voter — although It was evident that at least a thousand of these had been "qualified" by fraud. The Supreme Court writ arrived m time to prevent us from uivesti- gating the fraud; and, by one of those suspicious strokes of luck that seem to happen only to the corporations, our very proof that the votes were not "phony" by wholesale, only redounded m the public mind to the greater profit of the Beast! The Denver Republican celebrated the fact that the election had been probably "the cleanest held in Denver since it became a city." And It claimed the credit for itself and the Republican party. Said this official voice of the Beast, sweetly disguised: "It required an enormous amount of work to bring about this condition. It is a thing with which parties and courts grappled for years; It became necessary even to bvoke the Legislature M7 W8 THE BEAST and the Supreme Court to wrest from comipters of the ballot the fruits of illegal victory." Do not let your smile be cynical. "Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue." There is still hope so long as the animal must wear its sheep's skin — so !ong as it recognizes that if the people knew it in its true stripes they would promptly cut its throat. I have that hope yet; and I had it very strongly in the campaign of exposure in which we were engaged throughout these years. It seemed to me only necessary for the people to "see the cat" b order to set them on it; and I continued, with all the power of my lungs, to "bawl out" the corporations and recite the list of their crimes. The corporations replied through the Board of County Commissioners by refusing to pay an outside judf,e for helping me in my court and by disallowing bills incurred in the work of the court by probation officers. During the five years that I had been in charge of the court, we had done more than twice as much work as any two courta in the history of the state, and we had done it for less than half the usual expense. In Indian- apolis, there were three judges and three courts doing the work of our one court in Denver. The judge and the clerks in our court had more than returned their salaries to the county in fees paid by litigants. Although the four [district judges together had less work to do than I had, they wer« raf *»«*•- *i*MM* ^ - THE GOVERNORSmP 259 continually calling in outside assistance and the County Board was paying for it. I appeared several times before the Board to ask for help, and I usually found in attendance, as the Board's confidential adviser, Mr. "Jim" Williams, the right-band man in politics of "Bill" Evans and the tramway company. I was even, on one occasion, referred to Mr. Williams, by the County Attorney, for the answer to my plea that I should have help with my court work. I did not get the help — avowedly because I refused to allow the Board to appoint extra officers, whom I did not need, at a cost of about six thousand dollars a year to the county. One of the officers of the Democratic party of the City Hall came to me and said: "You ought to go and see Mr. Field, president of the tele- phone company. He's willing to help you out." I did not go, but, s ,quently I accepted an invitation from a friendly county official to meet Mr. Field a*, luncheon, and 1 found him very suave and conciliatory, despite the fact that I had been publicly naming him, with Evans and Cheesmtin, as one of the corporation rulers of Denver. Mr. Field is a desiccated, small man who came to Colorado as a "lunger" and here regained his health. He was known in Denver, then (as he is now) to the politicians as "the brains of the System." Before I was talking to him very long 260 THE BEAST I guessed that he had been deputed to "take me in hand," to try friendship and gentleness whe.e force and enmity had failed. He blamed "Will," as he called Evans, for having opposed me in 1904; and he said he remembered well the conferences between Evans, Cheesman and himself about my candidacy for a return to the Cc y Court, and he confessed that they had played "poor politics" in oppos- ing me. He did not think, however, that I quite understood the gentle Will — who was "really a good man" and wanted to help me. They all wanted to help me. They all admired the work I was doing in the Juvenile Court. But they all felt I was mistaken in my charges against the corporations. However, he concluded by agreeing that I ought to have help in my court work and he promised that he would take the matter up "with Will" on the following Sunday, when he and Evans were to meet. He subsequently sent me a check for $250 toward the expenses of the Juvenile Improvement Association. Did I accept it ? I certainly did. Why ? For the same reason that I once accepted the aid of a woman in Den- ver who conducted a disorderly house. I sent for that poor creature, and an officer of my court brought her to -my chambers. I took her by the hand, looked her in the face, and said: "Madam, 1 want to thank you for your good : i^*'*t:»:^*^y -^ ^ THE GOVERNORSHIP 261 deeds and I want to tell you how I despise your evil ones. I accept the good you did. but I shall not shut my mouth about the evils of your busi- ness." She Tas a procuress, but her business was no worse than that of the corporations. She corrupted young girls; they corrupt whole com- munities. (A secretary of Mr. John D. Rockefeller once wrote me from New York to ask my views upon tamted money." I replied with this story about the procuress. He did not send me a con- tribution, but if he had done so. I should have accepted it.) I did not receive any help from Mr. Field, but I had a visit from Mr. "Jim" Williams and found him very friendly. Mr. Gerald Hughes also came to tell me how mistaken I was in my enmity to Mr. Evans and how Evans had had nothing whatever to do with my "turndown" by the machine in 1904. (Gerald Hughes is the son of Chas. J. Hughes, Jr. He was counsel for Evans and the tramway company in the franchise investigation; and when his father became United States Senator from Colorado, the son nominally succeeded him as attorney of the tramway com- pany and its allies.) They were all very pleas- ant, and I enjoyed their tacit admission that they and their master, the gentle "Will," controlled the appomtmenfs in my court as absolutely as If I were a chief clerk in one of the tramway offices. ii 26S THE BEAST But I made no promises; I accepted their ad- vances without being deceived by them; and finally I was informed by one of their a^nts: "There's nothing doing. They're still scared of you and Will isn't going to tell the Board to give you help yet." The fact that they were crippling the adminis- tration of justice in the community hud no more weight with them than it would have had with any band of criminals. And they were noi moved by the consideration that they were hampering us in the work for the children which they pro- fessed so much ^to admire! I tried to force the County Board's hand by "grand-standing" in an appeal to the public through my annual report, published in the Denver Post. But nothing came of it. I accused two of the County Commissioners, including the chairman, Mr. William Lawson, of committing the "crime of cheap graft and rejieated perjury," but even that did not move them. I had to arrange to become personally liable for the salary of the judges whom I called in to help me, and it cost me hundreds of dollars. I relate all this merely to show "the cat" — and as a warning to any one who is ambitious to carry the banner of rciorm in his own state, that there are "other ways of killing a dog besides choking it with melted butter." J was almost dead from overwork. I realized that I could not THE GOVERN^ Sinp 203 go on as I had been; my health would not permit It. And then I was galvanized into new aetivity by a confidential report that the Powei -, at the next legislature, were going to divide the County Court from the Juvenile Court and "lose" me in the shuffle." That meant that I must watch the commg elections and use my influence for candidates who should help me in the "deal." They were state elections. Governor McDon- aid's term was to expire; so was Judge CJabbert's- and a United States Senator was to be elected as well as a new legislature. It was certain that Alva Adams, who had been defrauded of his election as Governor in 1904, would again be the Democratic candidate on a "vindication" plat- form; and it was common talk that Simon Gug- pnheim, the head of the smelter trust, was to have the support of the corporations for the United States senatorship. As far back as 1902, my name had been used If preelection gossip as that of ,1 "dark-horse" candidate for the governorship; and I have already related how the corporation Democrats had tried to bribe me, on more than one occasion, with the promise of their machine's support in obtaining Ihe office. For several years I had been receiving, from people all over the state, enthusiastic encour- agement to run as a reform Governor; and the newspapers had been continually prophesying my candidacy and predicting my success. All this 264 THE BEAST was very flattering, but I knew — probably belter than any one else — that whatever the people might wish, the corporations were united against me; and the corporations ruled. I knew, too, that my work in ths Juvenile Court was as impor- tant as anything I could do as Governor, and I was not willing to give up my court until I had evolved an efficient legal procedure to promote its purposes and had firmly established it by law. In the early s. immer of 1906 there began to come to uiy desk hundreds of clippings from country newspapers and letters from friends, acquaintances and strangers, urging me to be a candidate for the governorship and promising to support me. The men with whom I had been working for the reform of the election laws saw an opportunity to carry our laws by electing me on a platform embodying them. Mr. Paui Thieman, of the Post, was particularly confident. And finally, in order lo put a stop to plans that I considered hopeless, I wrote to Mr. Alva Adams, privately, and u.ged him to come out as the Democratic candidate, so that I might be relieved of the expectations of my well-wisherc. I have made many mistakes in my life, but that was the most foolish. I had been fighting the Adams family for years, and I should have understood that there is no enduring virtue, as Mark Twain says, "in the good end of a bad banana." Frank Adams, as chairman of the THE GOVERNORSHIP 265 Denver Police Board, had been the acknowledged agent o( the Bear* 'c controlling the saloons, dives I J disorderly houses for political purposes; and Senator "Billy" Adams had always been the yrafty leader of the corporation cgents in the Legislature. Alva Adams, howevei, had seemed to me a man of another stripe; he was ti e logical candidate, I thought, of the Democratic party; and, in any case, if he would announce his inten- tion of makmg the campaign, it would leave my friends without the support of any party fur my name. Alva Adams replied that he would "rather take to the woods" than run again. I wrote a second letter, but it received no reply — except a newspaper mterview with Adams saying that he would not be a candidate. His son, Alva Adams, ji., came to my court and told Mr. Ger- ald Hughes and a number of politicians that his father did not intend to run and was favourable to my candidacy. I received similar assurances from other sources. This left me in greater uncrtamty than ever. A labour leader of national reputation, passing through Denver, come to my house and advised my candidacy. He assured me that the labouring men would never support Adams; he was equally sure that they would support me. The whole sta was up in protest against the rule of the corporations and their use of the Supreme Court, 8fl0 THE BEAST and the hour had come to lead a reform move- ment to success. lie asked me what newspaper support I could count on. I told him Ihnt Senator Patterson's papers were calling on Adams to accept the Democratic nomination on a "vindication" issue, but that the Denver Post seemed favourable to me. We went to see Mr. Paul Thieman together, and Thieman was as enthusiastic as ever. I began to see visions and dream dreams of being pble at last to attack the Beast with a united public opinion behind nie — but I still hesitated. A few days later the Post endorsed me editorially as a candidate for Governor, and there was a flurry in the corporation camp. The paper was no more than on the streets before Mr. Field, as Thieman afterward told me, made a frantic effort to have the edition stopped d the paper's support reconsidered. But the Post had just lost in a fight with Evans about a public franchise deal, and the proprietors were eager for revenge. Their newspaper rivalry with Senator Patterson made them ambitious to defeat him as leader of the reform Democrats, by forcing my nomina- tion in spite of him. I found myself in the storm- centre of a small political cyclone. An inde- pendent body of Republicans in El Paso, Conejos and other counties offered me their support; the independents among the Democrats seemed all favourable; it bc^an to be evident that if I could THE GOVERNORSHIP 267 gel the Democratic nomination, the success of our whole reform movement would ' heim: Hon. Merle V-ncent in the House and Hon. Morton Alexander in the Senate. Both were lefeated for renomination at the next electioi). HUNTING THE BEAST 291 country that shall be free. It was for this we fought in 1906. It is for this tliat we are ficlitine still. *■ *• Our fight in 1906 had some disastrous results for me. We offended the blindly loyal party men among the Democrats as among the Republicans, and I lost the support of all the party newspapers. Senator Patterson's organs did not at once forgive my campaign against Adams. The Denver Republican treated me as an irreconcilable enemy of the corporations. And the Denver Post, having failed to tie me to a corporation Democratic ticket, turned to Bucbtel and Evans, and enlisted under that black flag which it has served and fought for, ever since — with occasional independent forays after loot of its own ! This is not as small a matter as it may seem. It has been my experience that there are no agents of reform as powerful in our American communi- ties as the newspapers. They are the very eyes of the people. What they refuse to see, it is almost impossible to discover to the public. What they desire to see wrongly, it is almost impossible to show in its true face. And this is well known to the Beast. It not only uses the editorial pages: it applies its influence to the reports of the news columns; .'f supplements editorial arguments and abuse, with misrepresentations, with falsifications, and with downright inventions in the reporters' room. 208 THE BEAST For example: A complaint was made m my court, by the Humane Society, against a woman who was drunk and ill-treatmg her children. A Deputy Sheriff arrested her and put her b the county jail, at the request of the neighbours, " to sleep off her drunk"; and they agreed to take care of the children. One of the "interests" news- papers, on its front page, headed the story somethmg like this : " Juvenile Judge sends poor washerwoman to jail, while six childien starve. Kind-hearted neighbours take care of children separated from mother who languishes b jail." The reporte. who wrote the story came to my chambers and explained: "Judge, I'm sorry about that article, but it wasn't my fault. The city editor told me I had to find somethbg to roast you about, and I sent in that story — but it wasn't so bad when I finished with it. A lot of things were added, after I turned it in." Or again: An Italian labourer, charged with neglecting his wife and encouraging his children to steal from the railroad tracks, came to my court drunk and used such vile langi ^ge that I sentenced him to jail for thirty days for contempt of court. I suspended twenty-nbe days of the sentence without telling him so, and next day — which was Sunday — I sent an order for his release, had him brought to my home and gave him a friendly lecture. He apologized, and — after the fashion of hb people — he kissed my HUNTING THE BEAST 29S hand before he went away, promisbg to attend to his work and look after his family. (And the court officers afterward reported that he kept his promise.) Some days later, a newspaper prmted a sensr.tional account of how I had taken a poor Italian from his home where his family was starving, and sentenced him to thirty days solitary confinement in the county jail because his children had picked up a few crnts' worth of coal from the railroad tracks. The article was headed: "A .I-^ffreys on the Bench." Whenever a boy who had been put on probation in my court was arrested for a second offence, the "kept" newspapers joined in an attack on the probation system, accused us of encouraging young criminals, and advocated the abolition of the Juvenile Court. Such an attack was made on us, once, because two of our boys had been rearrested ; and a railroad police officer (Mr. E. D. Hegg) in no way connected with our court, wrote to me that these boys were two out of 103 boys who had been before us from the district, and the 101 others had never backslided. Such misrepresentations, repeated and repeated for years, seriously hurt our work for the children. They seriously im- paired the public credit of our court — and that is what they were designed to do. The Beast was preparing to "get" me at last; having driven me ba upon the County Court with no political 204 THE BEAST support and no newspaper to defend me, it waa trying to alienate the sympathies of the independ- ent voters so that when my next election should come I might not have even the "sentiment" of the non-partisan citizens to rely on. My term would expire in the autuc.'ave the court the right to arrest and punish adults guilty of con- tributing to the delinquency of minors. Mr. Stidger took away from the Juvenile Court officers the power to file petitions in children's cases, denied the probation officers any police powers, and made the Juvenile Court an impotent little police court for children. In the House, Mr. Wilbur F. Cannon (the same Cannon who murdered our insurance bill so many years before) amended Stidger's bill so as to give the County Commis- sioners the power to appomt all the probation officers, the superintendent of the Detention School and so forth, so that, even though I remained judge, the court officTs would belong to the System. I simply served notice on Mr. Redd that I would not accept the judgeship of any such court, that I would remain in charge of the County Court — knowing that this was exactly what they were dividmg the court to prevent. After some irritated conferences, they agreed that I should have the right to appoint my own 296 THE BEAST I'ajMMli court officers, but they still refused to allow the probation officers police powers and refused the court the right to try the gamblers and dive keepers who debauched girls and boys. District Attorney Stidger was very frank in his explanation of why I could not have this power. It would hurt the System. Pacing up and down his office, with the door shut, he spoke for the Beast and announced the ultimatum of the Beast. I was to be given a court in which I might try the cases presented to me by the System, but I was not to have a court that should give me any power to interfere with, the System, by prosecuting those agents of vice who were protected by the System. We kept up these quarrels and conferences until within a few days of the close of the legisla- tive session, and then I served notice again that unless I were given a Juvenile Court with teeth. I should remain on the county bench. Stidger and my old law partner. Senator Gardener, finally compromised by accepting an amendment to their bill — an amendment providing that the Juvenile Court should have coordinate juris- diction with the District Court m all criminal cases in which minors were involved and against all persons who violated laws for the protection of minors. Senator Gardener introduced this amendment in the Senate ar.d had it passed. This was all very well, but I had no proof that the amendment had passed the Lower House. In HUNTING THE BEAST 297 fact the Clerk's rxord showed that it had not passed the Lower House. I do not wish, here, to charge that th ■'■e v,ao- a ronspiracy to betray me — although o le of tlie newspapers at the time freely made th .? i liaixv. But I had been warned that there was a plot to get me into the Juvenile Court and then "pull out the slats" from under me; and I refused to accept the Court unless I had proof that Gardener's amendment had i)assed the House also — for, without that proof, the "slats" would be loose. I got the proof. I was given a transcript of the records, signed by the Secretary of State, the Clerk and other officials showing that the Juvenile Court Bill and the amendment thereto had passed both the House and the Senate! That transcript nailed down "the slats" — for the Supreme Court of Colorado has held that you cannot go behind the legislative records even if you have extrinsic evidence to show that they are wrong. I accepted the judgeship of the new special Juvenile Court in July, 1907, with all the powers to protect children that I had had in the County Court for seven years, but of course with no power any longer to interfere with the System in election cases or to try adults for any offences in which the rights of minors were not involved. We have succeeded in getting from the Legislature laws that give the Juvenile Court not only power to go over the heads of the police in children's cases — so as to S;V 298 THE BEAST arrest offenders whom the System may wish to protect — but power also to act independently of the District Attorney in children's cases and to file complaints against offenders whom the District Attorney might wish to protect. It is true the Legislature did not seem to know it was passing such a law, but there it is ! There are ways of getting the best of the Beast legitimately and honourably without beating the tom-toms of public clamour. When the newspapers refused to help us with our "grand-standing," we found a way to do some still-hunting after night, horribly disguised. CHAPTER XVII A VICTORY AT LAST T COME, now, to the last chapter of this story -■■ of the Beast; but I come to it, in the reminiscence — thank heaven! — with a lighter heart than ,ny of us had when we faced it in the fact. As the result of seven years of almost fran- tic agitation for legislative reform, we had gained — an efifective registration law! Nothing more! In all our fights to obtain an honest charter for Denver, to prevent dishonest elections, to protect the city from the theft of its franchises, to defend the poor frt nloitation and to check the corpo- rations in tL , )use of the courts, we had failed. We had founded, it is true, a Juvenile Court with laws that protected the children from the agents of the System; but we had gained no election law that would protect the court itself; and we were continually assured by the agents of the Beast that they would "get" that court yet. Gover- nor Buchtel had gone about the country, in the summer of 1907. on a Chautauqua lecture tour, heralding himself as the man who had been called upon to "guide Colorado from the verge of polit- ical anarchy," and incidentally defending Gug- 2Q» 300 THE BEAST li' in.: - I,: genheim and the corporations that had elected him. The Denver Chamber of Commerce had passed a resolution declaring me an enemy of the state, because a false news despatch reported me as saying, in a public lecture in the East, that Guggenheim ought to be hanged if we hanged Orchard; and the members of the Chamber passed their resolution, although many of them afterward admitted to me that they thought I was "right" in my attacks on the corporations and their Sena- tor. ("You told the truth,'" they would assure me, privately, "but, you know, it hurts business to tell it — it hurts the prosperity of the state.") The Denver Post followed the resolution with a demand that I be driven from town, and stirred up all possible enmity againsi n. asa"defamer" of my state. In the city elections of the spring of 1908, the Anti-saloon League and the "church element" tried to elect a mayoralty candidate in opposition to Mayor Speer and the "dive ele- ment"; but the corporations, represented by Boss Evans, betrayed the League while pretend- ing to support it, and Speer was triumphantly reelected by the Beast, We were all dis- couraged. I knew that I was regarded as hope- lessly "discredited." I knew that the men whom I had fought believed that the pub!! and she had later heard me lecture in the *.ast. She had become interested in the work of the court; and now, after leambg of our need of money to defend the court b an election, she went to one of the court officers and asked whether she might be allowed to contribute $5,000 to a campaign fund. She was not a wealthy woman, but she and her husband -she said -had set aside $5,000 to be devoted to philanthropic work and she felt that to use the money in defence of our court would be philanthropic. I took care first that she should learn how little hope there was that I could be reelected; I gave her as 312 THE BEAST i much discouraging political information as 1 could; and then, finding her still eager to help us, I gladly accepted her help. She has never allowed her name to be made known. She has never accepted any credit for her act. But '^'ere is not a shadow of doab* in my mind that she saved the Juvenile Court. We began to organize at once. Mr. E. V. Brake, a labour leader, took charge. He got vohmteers among his followers to act as ward workers and even coaxed many away from the other parties to join with us. About two hundred women, many of them volunteers, came to our headquarters, took instructions on how to teach the voters to '''scratch," and began to go from house to house repeating the lesson. They reported a strong sentiment in our favour. The politicians of both parties recognized it too, and I began to receive the usual overtures from "lead- ers" who were willing to drop a dummy candi- date in order to get my name on the party ticket. It was a presidential campaign, and the Repub- licans needed all the support they could get against Bryan. Mr. Vivian, the Republican State Chair- man, held conferences with his committeemen and ward leaders, and advocated my nomination. He was opposed by the corporation attorneys and particularly by Mr. Field, president of the telephone company, who appeared in person to threaten that if I were put on the Republican ticket he would A VICTORY AT LAST 3,3 not give thecommittee the $8,000 promised by the company to the Republican campaign fund H. L.Doherty, president of the gas company, had sent word that if I were nominated on eifher'party ticket, every responsible official head in the J company's office should fall! Mr. Vivian and ^e Central Committee were eager, now, to have me on he ticket, but the corporation magnate^ with their hands in their pockets, blocked t^Tay The same sort of thing went on among the Democrats, and reports of it kept coming to me day by day Mr. Field was the active head"? the corporation opposition and he aid not dis- guise It. When Mr. Gilson Gardener, the Wash, ington correspondent of the Scripps papers came to Denver, Field said to him - in Ce IhI k'""!^ T""^^"* pronouncements ever made by the Beast: "Our company is in politics? Yes. Why? By virtue of necessity f^r n^l^'r contributes to political parties and for political purposes? Yes. Why? Because this IS he modern system. It began years ago. R exists for the same reason that we contribute to a state fa r or a Y M C A Tt K« "■""le 10 a l««„ • "^•^*i-«-A. It became the custom, ^!uTa ? !^P''* 'corporations to contribute Th!^ . L *''"'^" ^"'^ '^"'^'ly- 't -<»« politics. Ihen It became necessary. There came the unfair acts, and we needed men in office who would be our friends. S14 THE BEAST "Our company is in politics in order to have friends. We never have asked for anythbg improper. I speak for no other corporation or person; but our company has always been above reproach. But we do have friends. We have them in both parties. They come to me and ask advice. They come and ask me to help them lay their plans. They come regardless of their parties and they hold meetings m my office. I am not a boss. I have carefully avoided being anything like that. But I can't help it if they come to me and ask advice." He admitted that he had opposed my nomina- tion in both parties. " My opposition," he boasted, " was eifective. . Yes, it was effective with both parties. Judge Lindsey's name was left off both tickets." He said he had opposed me because I had made attacks on his "personal character," but that statement deceived no one. I had never attacked him except as one of the corporation presidents who were debauching politics .ind maintainmg the political system that united the law-breaking "dives," gambling hells and broth- els with the law-breaking public-utility com- panies and their corrupted courts. He deceived no one — least of all his interviewer, Gilson Gardener, who wrote, in the Express: "Judge Lindsey has been left off two strong party tickets in defiance of the voters' will and in pure revenge, for the truth which he has told. It is the A VICTORY AT LAST 315 work of the corporation powers— the tramway- telephone-water-gas combbation, manipulated by such men as Field and Evans." He certainly did not deceive the labour men. I was admitted to the meetings of their unions and addressed them night after night. In com- pany with Rev. A. H. Fish, of the Central Pres- byterian Church, and Mr. L. M. French, a labour leader, I went to the factories and shops at lunch- eon hour, talking to the men and women workers. We made it plain that our fight was against the tyranny of the corporations. The unions passed resolutions endorsmg our w ork, and the members of the barbers' union made every barber shop in Den- ver a centre of propaganda which their lathered customers could not escape. We sent out, from our headquarters, cards to the voters for them to sign, pledging their votes; and we received 23,000 of these pledges signed. The women — not so much their suffrage leaders or their politicians, as the mothers in the homes and the working women in the factories and the shops —came out for us by the thousands. Our head- quarters swarmed with newsboys and school- children anxious to help; and some of those boys made the most effective campaign orators we had. It was tickling to the verge of tears to hear them, on a public platform, addressing a crowded hall with their pathetic earnestness and their childish arguments. If the "kids" were going to "stay 316 THE BEAST wif" me, they pleaded, why shouldn't "Ihi folks" ? One of these boys spoke to an audienc, of several thousand at a W. C. T. U. conventioi in the Auditorium, and raised a heart-shakinj enthusiasm; and the aid and inspiration given U! by these noble women was a power in th< campaign. The corporation newspapers cut a.\ mention of it from their reports of the meetings - maintaining a policy of concerted silence aboul my candidacy in an attempt to "bottle" us. But the Denver Express kept on hammering; the signed pledges kept coming in; and at last Senator Patterson's two papers swung into line and things began to move with a whoop. The Christian Citizenship Union had succeeded in reaching the "church element" in spite of the opposition of those wealthy churches whose boards were controlled by the Beast. The labouring men and their wives packed our meet- ings. In the foreign quarters, and particularly on the West Side among the Russian Jews, the poor mothers whose children I had befriended received us with tears running down their cheeks, so that I could hardly speak to them for the choke m my throat. The people were up — with a shout — with a shout that was at once angry and tearful with anger, for we did not yet believe we could win — and the politicians shut their ears to it, and orated about their presidential candi- dates, and placarded the town with "Rebuke A VICTORY AT LAST 317 Guggenheim— write Bryan on your ballot." so IS to insure the election of Chas. J. Hughes Jr attorney for the tramway company, as another corporation senator to join Guggenheim in Washington! And the machine that called for a rebuke of Guggenheim was the machine that had elected Guggenheim! And the Hughes who was now to be elected, on that "rebuke." was the Hughes who. for years, in the courts, had fought for the corporations against the people who were to administer the " rebuke " ! These are the tricks of the Beast! As upon former occasions, when the Beast m Denver was in trouble. Mr. Bryan was sum- moned to act as the eloquent - but. I am sure unconscious -"tout" and "capper" of the System's confidence game. In 1902, with the graftmg County Commissioners on his platform he appealed to the people to vote the Democratic ticket, and the grafters applauded him with all the enthusiasm of guilt. Now, m 1908. with Chas. J. Hughes. Jr.. as the candidate of the local utility corporations, on a reform platform that has since proved to be the usual corporation fake Mr. Bryan called to the people to sup- port Mr. Hughes, and used every eloquence of his oratory, unwittingly, to "stall" the voters into the corporation "deal." Great is the Beast; and Bryan- even Bryan sometimes — is its prophet! SIS THE BEAST Our campaign went on gaily, nevertheless. It was a straight campaign against corporation ruic. I made no appeals to sentiment ; I often left the question of our court work out of my speeches. I was determined that if I was to be beaten, I must be beaten as the opponent of the Beast; and that if I was to be saved, it must be by voters who saw who were their masters and revolted against them. All the usual tricks of the Beast were used against us. Many Democratic and Republican "workers," in going their rounds, whenever they were asked by a voter how to vote for me, replied: "Oh, that's all right. He's on our ticket. Just vote it straight." And our workers were kept busy explaining that I was on neither party ticket. In order to issue instructions to voters, we asked the clerks in the office of the County Cjerk and Recorder where my name would appear on the official ballot; they replied: "In the fourth column about half way down." Accord- ingly, m our printed directions, we told the voters to look for my name "in the fourth column, half way down." But when the official ballot was issued, there appeared, half way down the fourth column: "For County Judge for short term, to succeed Ben. B. Lindsey," with the "Ben. B. Lindsey" in very large letters where it should not have appeared at all. Some distance below, in smaller type, my name appeared as an independ- ent candidate for Juvenile Judge; and as a result A VICTORY AT LAST 319 of this trick, it was estimated, some eight thousand votes intended for me were lost. In an ordinary election, it would have been sufficient to defeat m". But this was not an ordinary election, as the vote showed. When the polls opened, the betting was four to one that I would not get ten thou- sand votes. Early in the forenoon, it was known that at every polling place in Denver the people were scratching" as they had never "scratched" before. Women wearing long white badges - Vote for Judge Lindsey" - watched the approaches to the polling places all day long without relief, and accosted every voter. A news- boy, on the previous night, had obtained a dollar from our committee for "campaign expenses," had bought a dollar's worth of coloured chalk and sent out a horde of boys to mark the sidewalks, the walls and the fences with "Vote for Judge Lindsey" - and the party henchmen with brushes and mops had not succeeded in entirely obliterat- ing that "handwriting on the wall." By midday the betting gave odds in my favour, and the excitement among the politicians was breathless The foreigners who could not speak English came to the polls with cards on which friends had written for them, "I want to vote for Judge Lmd- sey. ' The women, everywhere, made no secret of the fact that they intended to vote for me. We began to believe that the impossible was about to happen at last. II: ll i! 8?0 THE BEAST I was, nyself. the last to believe. I had faitl m the ultimate triumph of the cause for whicl we were fighting, but I did not believe that w« could win in this campaign. I was resigned tc the loss of the Juvenile Court to the agents ol the Beast, and I had made arrangements to carry the fight on in a lecturing tour. I did not credit the first favourable reports from my friends when the polls closed. It was a presidential campaign; I was an almost wholly unsupported candidate for a small county office*; and never, of recent years at least, in a city like Denver, had any independent candidate in America carried a vote under such circumstances. When one of our committee telephoned me, at my house, that I had been elected by 10,000 majority, I refused to accept the report as even plausible. But the details kept coming in, from the well-to-do pre- cincts on Capitol Hill, from the foreign quarters, from the home districts of the working men and women, and even from the ward where the "dives" were thickest; and all b.i three gave me pluralities. At last, late in f e evening, I was summoned to the telephone by a call from my old opponent "Big Steve" — A. M.Steven- son—at Republican Headquarters; and he said "Ben, it's a d miracle. You're elected, and that's about all that's certain. There's been so *I had, However, been nominated on the Prohibition ticket. Ilu A VICTORY AT L.VST 331 much 'scratching' we don't know where the h we're at!" Elected? Out of 65.000 votes cast, we had polled, on the official count, 38,000, which was almost as many as my two opponents had together. Even without the 8,000 votes of which we had been cheated by tlie trick in the ballot - and although these votes had been counied for my opponents - I had a plurality of almost 15,000 The people had at last "seenthe cat" and they had scratched ' it to the bone! I went to bed that night, no longer a slave among slaves, but a freedman m a community that had at last risen agamst its masters and given them a warning of the wrath to come! What matter that the legislative candidates elected on that day on a reform platform, refused, m the session that followed, to pass any of the election laws which they were solemnly pledged to give us? What matter that the corporations obtained the election of Chas. J. Hughes as United States Senator? The people see "the cat ! They know what influence prevented the passage of the election laws. They know who elected Hughes and they know whom he repre- sents. They are on the trail of the Beast and some day — soon -in Colorado, they will be cutting its hide into cat-o'-nine-tail strips for the backs of the legislative traitors ana hired betrayers of public trust who have sold the com- «M THE BEAST munity into slavery and been rewarded with ai eminence of shame. This state, founded ii liberty, cannot be governed by the criminal btel ligence of corrupt men. Our people, bom tc freedom, will not see injustice bought and sold in their courts, laws purchased in their legislatures, cities robbed of their streets, vice protected b its dens, homes despoiled, ^.tris debauched, children ruined, the poor starved at their work, and the hired procunr ; of political prostitution enriched with the profits of all this tyranny, this misery, this disgrace. The day is coming. The reck- oning is due. »*i*ii*^*J>itli il mim CHAPTER XVIII CONCLUSION and iust devote yolS o^heTJtn"; "^ have made enemies who have Lm«! ^ °" your work. You can't Lt^ '"""P?"''* y«« in used to cret Th. \^u ^^ '^^nfibutions you the at'tafsup^'^rAndnh"^^'^' '"^-^ "^ iust as power'ful ^I" tht/e e 3"'^'^ "'' answer that T..f „, • "'^".^^'e. Let me of state DrintinJw • ^*''^*^= *° inspector 3«8 he saved the state 324 THE BEAST I? 'it $50,000 a year — or $300,000 b the four years. The Clerk of the Supreme Court made a similar investigation of the court's printing, and effected a considerable saving; I do not know how much. But, you see, this one small fight against graft saved the people at least a half a million dollars. As a result of my anti-machine decision in the licence- inspector case, $70,000 a year was col- lected from dive keepers and saloon men, which had been left uncollected before because the Police Board inspectors were "protecting" these men. This is on the testimony of Mr. Wm. Burghart, the inspector who succeeded the Sys- tem's tools. , By obtaining a law forbidding the collection of fees for prosecuting children, we have saved the state $10,000 a year since 1903 — about $50,000 to date. Before this law was passed two little girls who had stolen a few pennies' worth of bright beads from a shop, were charged with burglary, and the fees for convicting them — paid to the constable, justice, sheriff, jurors, district attorney and court — amounted to at least $150. By sending boys unaccompanied to state institu- tions we have saved in sheriff's fees at least $5,000. Our books show that the sheriff's fees for taking two boys to the State Reformatory at Buena Vista were $140. The County Commissioners held that I might not send prisoners to Buena Vista without a sheriff — that they were criminals and CONCLUSION 325 had to be treated as such — but our right to send them unaccompanied, on trust and honour, to other institutions, could not be denied. By our reform of the probate laws we have saved estates m probate at least $50,000 a year — $300,000 to date. By taking all children's cases into the County Court in 1901 and abolishbg most of the fees for trying them, we saved the county about $10,000. By domg the work of the Juvenile Court — when it was first instituted — without salary, we saved the county the cost of an extra court, about $12,000 for a year. By cab "ng in an outside judge and handlmg the Juvenile Court work in the County C; urt, we saved the public $10,000 a year for six years — $60,000. In 1903 Governor Peabody sent an inspector to our court to compare the cost of our method of handling children's cases with the cost under the old system; and m his message to the Legisla- ture he stated that in eighteen months our methods had "resulted in a saving to the county and the state of $88,827.68." This, in nine years, would amount to $500,000. In 1901 there was a movement in Denver to establish a Parental School for chronic truants. The Legislature even passed a law providing for its establishment. It would have cost $50,000 to build and $25,000 a year to maintain it. Our probation and report system obviated the necessity 8«6 THE BEAST of such a Parental School, at a savmg, to dat« of $250,000. Our Detention School, which take the place of the jail for children, costs less thaj $10,000 a year for equipment and maintenance. By refusing to allow the County Commissioner to appomt political "workers" to sinecures m th( County Court, we saved in three years aboui $18,000. Durmg the seven years that I was judge of th« County Court we not only paid all the salaries of the judge and the clerks of the court out of the fees paid by litigants, but we turned over to the county more than $50,000 earned by the court. So that while I was judge of the County Court, the county not only did not pay us a penny for our work, but we paid the county $50,000 for letting us do the work. And if you will add up the preceding items of saving, you will find that we paid the county $50,000 for lettmg us save it more than two millions! But the real glory of our struggle has not been Its savmg of dollars and cents, but of flesh and blood. When I first visited the Industrial School at Golden, I found armed guards in the reforma- tory buildings and some of the boys shackled with ball and chain on the grounds; I found the iron boot m use, the boys being flogged in the presence of their fellows, and many of the usual prison brutalities practised on the miserable and rebellious children. To-day there are no armed ^.a.»*-J ^ .4 -,: 4,*!.^ ' C^ >»AA.kJiA)| ■!'— *-'*^^j (f ■^ ^■^^■WdU.iajt.'jAAJi CONCLUSION 3j, 8i»rdi, DO chains, »„ p,i,„„ „,|,,,„,. „ from their parents, accompany them to th/, • road station unwatched. In/ ll themse 1" to their duties; they learn useful trT^r J the cty; and every last boy of the four hunTreS at the day's end. was back in his dormitory S are happy; they are learning to be honest health? useful citizens, instead of bnitalized anH r K i • ^' criminals. Of a Sunday, in S ehapel ttS t"'ir:i tT/*'^ ^-"'»"- to'tlr th m struggle _rf we had nothing to show for it but this reformed "orison" — fl. of c , '""^ " ''"* St Mz;' ^'^'''"*'^ ''''^'''' ^ '=•'-' •'f -f- When I went on the County Bench the div. tTlnl^rf " "^"^ ^"'°°" "'" who deLtctd boys and girls were not only protected by the 328 THE BEAST police and other officials, but by the technicalitiei of the law. It was impossible to convict th( saloon man or the gambler unless we coulc prove the serving of "liquor "to young peoplt or their participation in the gambling game and this was always difficult. Now we have "contributory delinquency" laws that requin the keeper of a saloon or any disreputable resort to forbid boys and girls frequenting it; and he can be punished if they are so much as seen there. We have obtained laws that will permit oui probation officers to arrest him; and we can ourselves file a complaint against him if the District Attorney refuses to act. The result is that no man or woman in Denver — no, not the head of the System and king of the corporations himself — has political "pull" enough to save him from the punishments of the law if he oflfends against the poorest slum child in Denver. No one can know how much that means to the com- munity unless he can remember the horrible traffic in young virtue that used to make our streets and alleys in the dive district the open roads to physical and moral hell; and no one who knows it can doubt that our fight has been a thousand, thousand times worth while — yes, even if this alone had been the one result of it! We have obtained an effective registration law that prevents most of the ballot-box stuffing. We have obtained a probate code that is conceded by .L ■ < i» m i CONCLUSION 329 lawyers to be one of the best in America. We have obtained amendments to the child-labour laws, affording children better protection and addmg a jail penalty for violation instead of a ight fine; amendments to the compulsory school law requiring a complete school year for al children, and providing for the relief of needy ehidren; laws forbidding the prosecution of children for crime and requiring that they be treated under the chancery jurisdiction, and the ni es of equity, as wards of the state, needing "aid help, assistance and encouragement" ; a provision in the pity charter and the statutes of the state, forbid- dmg the placing of children under fourteen years of X!.e'^i.''"'^"''"I'''^''"^*^^'^"''-home-schoo where they may be cared for; a set of laws, enforceable m both chancery and criminal courts makmg parents responsible for neglectir-. their children or setting them a bad example; °a l"; for the special care of dependent children, nro- vidmg for the inspection of all homes and institu- S;I 7' P"'".".' ^"^ '^^ '""'^ °f dependent Children, a law requiring parents, who are able o pay. to support their children in state institu- W s/oon'f ^":r'^^'"g «'-phan children at least $2,000 from the estate of the parents before right to place orphan children with persons professing the same religion as the parents; a law forbiddmg any court to take a child away ?■:■: 11 330 THE BEAST from a parent until the parent's rights have been carefully guarded and adjudicated upon' probation laws for adults; and a dozen other minor laws and amendments of similar purport and eileet. We have helped to obtain night schools in Den- ver, ungraded schools for backward children, public playgi-ounds, and public baths. We have failed to obtain trade schools, but we have not ceased our efforts to obtain them. We have established summer camps for poor children in the mountains, obtained work for them in the beet fields and fruit orchards, and found employment and assistance for thousands of city children. Our Juvenile Improvement Association for the betterment and protection of the child has spread over the whole country. Our work for the children has been taken up by President Roosevelt in a mes- sage to Congress, by John Hay, Secretary of State, by Herbert Gladstone in a recommendation to the British House of Commons, by Professor Freudenthal, as a representative of the German Emperor, and by officials from countries in all parts of the world. Of all the thousands of children whom we have dealt with, not more than 10 per cent, have been returned for a second offence; and we estimate that 95 per cent, have "made good " in the end. No one can know what a saving of young citizens this means. One of the tramway company's detectives is authority for the statement CONCLUSION 331 that of 1.000 boys whom he has brought to our the railroad, only one class of boys has ever been returned for a second offence -'and these we^ not more than a dozen newsboys who " hopped "on thecarstoselltheirpapers. Under the oldTethoSs of cnmmal prosecution and jail sentence, from 65 to Z^T"'.1 ''^^ '''"'^'' were returned to the jaH for a second term within five years; and every term m jail meant a term in a public school of crim^ that made the children worse mstead of b^u'r Jery few of these laws -and none of the important ones -could have been obtained with- out breakmg with the political system by whLh he corporations profit and which their bribes and mfluence maintam. Few of these laws could have been obtamed without first rousing the communis to a sense of its responsibilities to the child and T^Mu °!^°''^^ '" '••« P°""'=''' powers. We should have been false to the child had we failed to pomt out that the rule of social, economt mdustnal and political mjustice maintained b^ th^MlH^"' w°' ""^ responsible for much of the child s misfortune and most of the increase in failed to help m educating the public to see that the greatest wrongs to the home, the child and the com- munity are mflicted by the rich criminals of the community. And as for the contributions that we 888 THE BEAST might have obtained from the corporations bj kneehng to them, let me boast that by asserting my mdependence and going on the public platform to obtam our reforms. I have been able in nine years to earn enough as a lecturer to be able to donate •20.000 to our work out of my earnings and my salaiy; and this is a good deal more than we could have begged from our corporation masters even if we had kissed the ground in front of their feet. Observe, too. that these results have been gamed by the "picayune" fight of a judge of a small county court, without money, without mfluence" and for the most part without an organization. Imagine what could have been done by a leader of the people with a political following and a place in the Legislature from which to speak! What defeats might not have been turned into victories! What losses to the people might not have been made unimaginable gains ! Consider these facts: In our first city charter we had provisions giving the city power, from time to time, to "make reasonable regulations concerning the operation and use of all franchise rights and privileges operated and used in the city and county, and to fix reasonable n. mum charges for water, light, telephone service, .treet railway fares and other utilities or properties devoted to the public use." This charter was CONCLUSION 338 defeated and these rights denied the citizens by the corporations with the help of Boss Speer and his Democratic city machine and Police Com- missioner Frank Adams and his protected "dive element." By the use of the Legislature, the courts and public officials, the corporations are establishing a power trust that has obtained incredible rights in all the watersheds and power streams surrounding Denver, without any reservation to the state of the people's rights in these natural resources ; so that our children and our children's children, for all time will be compelled to pay the heirs of the Beast for the nght to use the water power that should have been an asset of the community instead of an asset of the Beast. Some of the coal companies have obtained from the State Land Board hundreds of acres of land devoted by the state to the support of the schools. Some of this land is so rich in coal that it is worth at least »2,000 an acre; and the coal companies have obtamed it for nominal prices. These frauds have been notorious for years — and not less notorious has been the recent failure of the courts to punish the guilty state official who was the tool of the land robbers. All laws, such as the eight-hour laws, the employer's liability law, and laws requiring the use of safety appliances have been either def^Med or laad^ ^effective by the corporation 884 THE BEAST control of ihe Legislatures that should have passed the laws or of the public officials who should enforce them. The State Railroad Com- mission has been a pitiful joke. The system of railroad rebates and unjust discriminations in rai road charges has flourished poisonously The railroad lobby, with one of Senator Teller's brothew as attorney for the Union Pacific Railroad, has strangled every bill that attempted to regulate the railroads for the public good; so that, for example, the son of ex-United States Senator Dorsey (the other member of the Teller law firm) was able to boast to the General Solicitor of the Union 1 acifac Railroad, in a letter written from Denver m May. 1903: "At the last session of the Legisla- ture, although many bills were introduced which would greatly prejudice the railroad company's interests, no legislation was enacted to our dis- advantage. On the contrary several acts wer« passed which were favourable to railroad com- panies, some of which had been caused to be introduced by the Union Pacific Railroad Company." One of the bills referred to as prejudicial to the railroad company's interests - according to a previous letter written by Teller and Dorsey in February, 1903 ~ was "House bill No. 181. by m. Frewen." which provided "penalties for failure to comply with existing statutes in respect to safety appliances, etc." Teller and CONCLUSION 833 Dorsey reported that "everj- effort should be made to defonf this bill, and enquired. " Will you kindly advise us whether Union Pacific Railroad Com- pany is willing to pay its share of any reasonable expense mcurred in this connection?" President Burt replied that the bill was one of those "more or less objectionable" and "should l)e defeated." Whatever expen.se," he wrote, "needs to be incurred m connection with legislative matters, you are authorized to make." The bill was killed m committee. And let me add, as a com- mentary on the defeat of such laws requiring the safeguarding of workmen engaged in dangerous occupations, that in the nation's last generation of childhood, 32,000 childivn were made orphans by coal-mme explosions alone, and three-fourtlis of these explosions might have been prevented by the use of safety appliances such as the govern- ments require in Germany, Belgium and other European countries.* loJo/'lf ^^^^ ^^'°'' ''^ ^^^ Legislature (April. 1909) all attempts to pass the "platform pledges" on which the Democrats had gained office were defeated by the united corporation legislators among the Democrats and Republicans alike V\e could obtain no anti-straight ticket law. no direct nomination law, no corrupt-practices act — no m easure designed to restore representative ^^ THE BEAST government and overthrow the rule of the Beast by freeing our elections from the control of the corporations^ The same Legislature killed the b. I gmng he people a court in which to contest a fraudulent franchise-election, although the attor- neys for the corporations had contended in mv court that, until such a bill was passed, there was no court on earth in which the people could recover the hundred million dollars' worth of public property that had l,een stolen from them by the franchLse-election frauds. When '-e bill was Killed, the Legislature was controlled by the cor- poration machine that elected Chas. J. Hughes to the United Stales Senate; and Chas. J. Hughes was one of the attorneys who defended the cor- porations m the franchise-election contests. When the bill was killed its fate depended most upon a Special Orders" committee of three men. of whom two were Senator "Billy" Adams, the most notorious corporation champion in the Senate, and Senator Rodney J. Bardwell. the paid attorney of the Gas and Electric Com- pany. And this same Bardwell introduced, and the Legislature gaily passed, two bills giving the Gas and Electric Company "special privileges" in prosecuting persons who stole gas or electricity, by practically providing that the accused person in such cases should be required to prove himself mnocent or go to jail for as much as ninety days for stealmg gas! No bill to protect the people CONCLUSION 337 from the steal of a gas fnin„ which the citizens of Denver n,,,sl p.,v interest! Money stolen from our homes l.y a m.lhud more refined but none the less crimin;,! tliun the entry of a second-story man." There is no end to it. I might go on in this way to fill a volume with instances of proof that the u, f[ ^°'°'«*1° " exploited and the people robbed by a government by the Beast and for the Beast. A system of corruption that aims to pick the corruptible man for pubhV- service and refuses the honest one an opportunity to serve' has made most of the public life and administra- tion of public affairs in Colorado a gigantic failure a huge oppression. The functions of government are no longer discharged as against the corpora- ions, except where an error of judgment on the part of the corporations, or an unforeseen frustration of their plans, has permitted an honest ■:1> 338 THE BEAST man to obtain an opportunity of honestly filling a public office. The ignorant and the dishonest apologists of the System contend that the men of wealth have, in self-defence, merely corrupted corruption and bought up the politicians who were preying upon them. You might believe it, if there had ever been a case in our courts in which a corporation had prosecuted a legislator for blackmail or attempted to defend itself from a dishonest public official. You might believe it, if you could believe that the boys who steal "junk" are prey- ing upon the junk dealer who induces them to steal it. And even if you believed it, you would have to concede that there is no patriotism in business, no responsibility to the state, no obligation of citizenship to expose dishonesty m public office or oppose the profit of it, and no higher sense in the man of wealth than a criminal self-bterest ar Ihe cowardice of a knave. Such an excuse — such an apology — it is impossible to accept. Every man who has had anything to do with politics knows that it is a lie. Our L«>gislatures have been bought by the cor- porations not for self-protection ; our courts have been corrupted in no struggle against injustice; the "dives" have been subsidized against society not because society oppressed the good. The whole System is an alliance of law breakers against CONCLUSION 339 the sources, agents and penalties of the law It IS the alliance of a "plunderbund" -a compact among thieves and criminals, rich and poor, for the subversion of law and the protection of illegal profit. ° Even though I had never succeeded in doing anythmg to check this System, to oppose this corruption, I should still be content that I had fought It. For such a defence of liberty, it is a privilege to fight. It is an honour to be defeated jn It. It is a happiness beyond glory to succeed, however obscurely, in the smallest struggle for it It is my one hope that as long as I live I may be able I may be found worthy. I may be considered fit. to devote myself to this allegiance, and in this cause to defend my state and its people, my own birthright and our children's inheritance, our riglit to freedom and our institutions of freedom that are founded in that right. Well I have done. I have tried to write with- out malice -to do no one an injustice - to tell the truth, without fear as without favour, in the firm belief that the truth shall make us free I shall be called "an enemy of the state." because 1 have attacked the enemies of the state — for the corporations in Colorado, like King Louis in France, hold majestically. "The state.' It is I'» I shall be called a tiaitor to the community because I have tried to expose the traitors in the com- w 840 THE BEAST munityjand the traitorous newspapers of th. shall be cal^d "a blackener of the fai, nZe o Colorado" because I have named the meHho ^:-T:'' '^'r''^ ^' P-tituteS di: «do-for no men hate the light more than the 21 ^u^' ^^ '''' '="'°'« ^Wch the Ii!tt laSwe ""r ^'P '•'-'-Heaven Jffp TlunniJ "*/'™8»'^« toward better things. wii^i::rSe:brwu^rthts£ .m^s^worth the agony. U* us^^t;;^^'^* THE BMD •s of the * cry. I name of men who ted Colo- than the the light I'en help r things, ilization. end, the ;le. Let '%-n ^\