Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/257

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advice. I found that the County was paying several hundred per cent, too much for all supplies to my Court.”

As with the children and as wit the Police Board, the Judge wished to give the County Commissioners a hearing, so he wrote them a letter containing the facts. “I thought prob- ably they didn’t know about these overcharges. I didn’t want to misjudge them, and I wanted to examine into the situation with them privately and personally. I believe if they had come up with the truth, I’d have been satisfied if they had promised to cut it out.”

The Judge received no reply to his letter. He sent another, and still no response; that is to say, none that was direct. There was an in- direct response, however, which interested the Judge profoundly. Both the Police and the County Boards of Denver were bi-partisan, but the fighting line in the politics of the city was a machine, not a party line, and the Police and the County Boards were at odds. The County Board had appointed Lindsey a judge. When he went after the Police Board, Frank Adams, the president, unable to believe in honesty and sincerity, had looked around for an explanation of “Lindsey’s enmity” to him; and the theory he fixed upon was that Lindsey, out of gratitude