I have a copy of one Denver paper, containing an interview with Lord and Lady Decies, in which the reporter mentions having been greeted "like I was a regular caller," adding: "The more I looked the grander everything got." The same reporter referred to Decies as "the Lord," which must have struck him as more flattering than when, later, he was mentioned as "His Nibs." The interviewer, however, finally approved the visitors, stating definitely that "they are Regular Folks and they don't four-flush about anything."
When it comes to publicity there is one man in Denver who gets more of it than all the "Sacred Thirty-six" put together, adepts though they seem to be.
It is impossible to consider Denver without considering Judge B. Lindsey—although I may say in passing that I was urged to perform the impossible in this respect.
Opinion with regard to Judge Lindsey is divided in Denver. It is passionately divided. I talked not only with the Judge himself, but with a great many citizens of various classes, and while I encountered no one who did not believe in the celebrated Juvenile Court conducted by him, I found many who disapproved more or less violently of certain of his political activities, his speech-making tours, and, most of all, of his writings in the magazines which, it was contended, had given Denver a black eye.
Denver is clearly sensitive about her reputation. As a passing observer, I am not surprised. With Denver, I believe that she has had to take more than a fair share of criticism. She thoroughly is sick of it, and one way in which she shows that she is sick of it is by a billboard campaign.
"Denver has no bread line," I read on the bill-boards. "Stop knocking. Boost for more business and a bigger city."
The charge that the Judge had injured Denver by "knocking" it in his book was used against him freely in the 1912 and 1914 campaign, but he was elected by a majority of more than two to one. He is always elected. He has run for his judgeship ten times in the past twelve years—this owing to certain disputes as to whether the judgeship of the Juvenile Court is a city, county, or state office. But whatever kind of office it is, he holds it firmly, having been elected by all three.
At present the Judge is engaged in trying to complete a code of laws for the protection of women and children, which he hopes will be a model for all other States. This code will cover labor, juvenile delinquency, and dependency, juvenile courts, mothers' compensation, social insurance (the Judge's term for a measure guaranteeing every woman the support of her child, whether she be married or unmarried), probation, and other matters having to do with social and industrial justice toward mother and child. It is the Judge's general purpose to humanize the law, to cause temptations and frailties to be considered by the law, and to make society responsible for its part in crime.
The Judge is also trying to get himself appointed a Commissioner of Child Welfare for the State, without salary or other expense.
Of all these activities Denver, so far as I could learn, seemed generally to approve. A number of women, two corporation presidents, a hotel waiter, and a clerk in an express office, among others, told me they approved of Lindsey's work for women and children. A barber in the hotel said that he "guessed the Judge was all right," but added that there had been "too much hollering about reform," considering that Denver was a city depending for a good deal of her prosperity upon tourists.