306 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS of cases, only hardens the o£fender and confirms him in evil ways. The judge began to ask himself if it were not high time that the future of the youth should be given more con- sideration than the value of the property he might be guilty of stealing or the importance of the misdemeanor he might be guilty of committing. There was but one answer to this ques- tion. The reform of the wrong-doer was certainly the para- mount object to be attained in such cases. The district attorney was approached and asked that all children's cases be sent to Judge Lindsey's court and that in future they be accused as juvenile disorderly persons under the school law rather than as violators of the criminal code. This request was readily and cheerfully granted, for the other judges did not care to be troubled with this class of cases at all, if their accommodating colleague would try them in his court. The interest of Judge Lindsey was now stimulated by facts brought to his attention through a study of the methods of dealing with juvenile offenders. He visited the State Be- formatory at Golden in order to get information at first hand. There he saw boys in their teens treated like hardened crim- inals. The ball and chain were not infrequently used as a means of reform. The worst of these evils he tried to have corrected even in the reformatory. But other things which he afterward saw in his own city brought the matter more closely home to him. A visit to the jails maintained by the city and the county revealed conditions which were of the very worst. Filth, dirt, and vermin were plentiful. The walls were dilapidated and the plastering had peeled off in great patches. The sanitary conditions were bad and the odors re- pulsive. But what was worse than all of this was the fact that no effort was made to keep youthful offenders separated from old and hardened criminals. Boys guilty of their first offense were here herded with men who had grown gray in lives of crime. Boys were instructed in the ways and means of the professional criminal and their minds were being con- stantly filled with everything that could be told them which was vile and degrading. The jails were only schools of in-
