And the things they told would raise your hair. I saw the blushes rise to the foreheads of some of the ministers at the first details. As we went on, the perspiration stood on their faces. Some sat pale, staring appalled at these freckled youngsters from whose little lips, in a sort of infantile eagerness to tell all they knew, there came stories of bestiality that were the more horrible because they were so innocently, so boldly given. It was enough to make a man weep; and indeed tears of compassionate shame came to the eyes of more than one father there, as he listened. One boy broke down and cried when he told of the vile indecencies that had been committed upon him by the older criminals; and I saw the muscles working in the clenched jaws of some of our “investigating committee”—saw them swallowing the lump in the throat—saw them looking down at the floor blinkingly, afraid of losing their self-control. The Police Commissioner made the mistake of cross-examining the first boy, but the frank answers he got only exposed worse matters. The boys came and came, till at last, a Catholic priest, Father O’Ryan, cried out: “My God! I have had enough!” Governor Peabody said hoarsely: “I never knew there was such immorality in the world!” Some one else put in, “It’s awful,—awful!” in a half groan.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “there have been over two thousand Denver boys put through those jails and those conditions, in the last five years. Do you think it should go on any longer?”
Governor Peabody arose. “No,” he said; “no. Never in my life have I heard of so much rot—corruption—vileness—as I’ve heard today from the mouths of these babies. I want to tell you that nothing I can do in my administration can be of more importance—nothing I can do will I do more gladly than sign those bills that Judge Lindsey is trying to get through the Legislature to do away with these terrible conditions. And if,” he said, turning to the Police Commissioner, “Judge Lindsey is ‘crazy,’ I want my name written under his, among the crazy people. And if any one says these boys are ‘liars,’ that man is a liar himself!”
Phew! The “committee of investigation” dissolved, the boys trooped away noisily, and the ministers went back to their pulpits to voice the horror that had kept them silent in my small chamber of horrors for two hours. Their sermons went into the newspapers under large black headlines; and by the end of the next week our juvenile court bills were passed by the Legislature and made law in Colorado.
The Cry of the Children
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(See page [644])
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers—