Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/173

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wanted bread; the State gave him a stone. It branded him a criminal, made him a criminal. It made the pressure of evil upon him inexorable. To-day he is a man and in the penitentiary.

“The younger brother was as wayward as the elder. Four years ago he was brought to the Juvenile Court, defiant and frightened, just as his brother had been taken to another tribunal. The policeman told me the boy was a very Ananias, and I replied that, given the same conditions, he (the cop) would probably have been the same, and the officer went away convinced that there was no use bringing the boys to the Juvenile Court, where the Judge ‘did nothing to them.’ The policeman would count as nothing the many hours during many weeks that I laboured for that boy. He told me the truth; he convicted himself, but no stigma of conviction was put upon him, and he was not punished. He was put on probation, and encouraged to do his best. He was made to feel that the State was on his side; that the forces of the Law were working for him rather than against him; that the Court was his friend, his appeal when he was in trouble. And that Morris, as I will call him, did feel perfect faith in the Court the Law, and the State, he proved once in an amusing way.

“One day I was trying an important will case.