JUSTICE, ETERNAL
Nations change their names, their boundaries, their creeds and their languages. The altars of yesterday are but the curios of to-day. The temples that have been raised to the worships that have now disappeared from the face of the earth but move our wonder that beliefs so simple and so transparent should have nerved the minds of men to raise such marvels of architecture. But tho creeds and dynasties and languages are ephemeral, the principles of justice are eternal; and this Government, founded and built upon them, will, I believe, last to the end of time.—William Bourke Cockran.
(1711)
JUVENILE COURT EXPERIENCE
Judge Ben Lindsey, who has been made famous by his remarkable work in the Juvenile Court of Denver, tells the following in The Survey:
A heart-broken mother whose child was becoming dependent can tell her own story: “My husband, judge, is a good man; he was steady at his employment as structural ironworker until recently. Now he is neglecting his home and his work. As soon as he quits work he goes down to the gambling-house and there he is being ruined. He used to go to mass with me on Sunday, and he was so good and loving to us all. Now he is indifferent, gloomy and melancholy. I am without clothes and the children have no shoes. He has gambled away two hundred dollars of the money that belongs to his union, for he was highly respected and elected its treasurer. I gave him fifty dollars to pay the chattel mortgage on our furniture, and I did not know that he had gambled it away until the chattel-mortgage man came and threatened to take the stove and furniture out of the house. I went to police headquarters and they were rude and insulting to me. But one of the officers came up to me and whispered confidentially to me that if I would go to the Juvenile Court they might help me out of my troubles.”
Of course the “big business” men who commercialize political parties had little concern about their part in the ruin of that home and in the dependency and delinquency of that child. I sent for their political partner, the gambler who conducted the hell that was burning up that home. He admitted it all. I told him I would make a noise if he did not pay back that money to the poor mother. He paid it back. It would have been useless to talk about arrest and prosecution, for the public officials of that period would do neither.
(1712)
K
KEENNESS