were amazed after it was all over to see in the
new laws “what Lindsey had been up to.” An
officer in one of the telegraph companies said
the “interests” would never have let either the
child labour or the adult delinquency bill pass
if they had known of them. The Judge had
learned that the messenger service was a degrading
influence for boys; they were sent to all sorts of
vile places, saw all sorts of vile things, and caught
respectable citizens in predicaments the knowl-
edge of which made the boys cynical and vicious.
So he advised, and he still advises, both boys
and parents against the messenger service. But
he wished also to have a club to hold over the
companies; wherefore he had drawn into one
of his bills a clause including officers of telegraph
companies under the “adult delinquency law.”
The companies, suspecting the Judge, twice
sent a lawyer to the capital to see “Lindsey’s
bill,” and he saw one bill, an inoffensive one,
never the other. He didn’t know there was
another. It was the other that “hurt our busi-
ness,” he said. Thus beaten, the companies
never dared to move for a repeal; they surrendered,
and, calling on the Judge, came to an understand-
ing with him about what they might and might
not do with boys.
There was a fight on these bills, however.
