way to beat it was to have the ballot-boxes
stuffed. Yet, when some inexperienced young
men organized a League for Honest Elections,
this County Judge came down off the bench to
help the league. And, as usual, his speech
was no mere perfunctory address on the sacred-
ness of the ballot-box; he named names, and he
named not merely the despised agents who did
the dirty work; Judge Lindsey called the roll
of the officials who employed and protected the
ballot-box stuffers! The people, already aroused,
became so inflamed that finally their rulers had
to elect a pretty good charter themselves.
Do you see the situation ? Do you see Ben Lindsey doing his duty, all of it, not only as a judge of children, but as County Judge, and not only as a judge on the bench, but as a man on the bench and off it ? and fighting all the while for his life; cheerfully, without malice, but without fear ? Paul Thieman in the Denver Post once called Ben Lindsey “the first citizen of Colorado,” and declared that, not the mines and the mills, not the railroads, the farms, and the banks, but Ben Lindsey’s work was “the greatest thing the state has produced.” And from the point of view of the history of man, this is true. It looks absurd from a shop window, but Paul Thieman was seeing things through
