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Beast
Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey’s exposé of big business’s influence on Colorado and Denver politics, a best seller when it was originally published in 1911, is now back in print. The Beast reveals the plight of working-class Denver citizens—in particular those Denver youths who ended up in Lindsey’s court day after day. These encounters led him to create the juvenile court, one of the first courts in the country set up to deal specifically with young delinquents. In addition, Lindsey exposes the darker side of many well-known figures in Colorado history, including Mayor Robert W. Speer, Governor Henry Augustus Buchtel, Will Evans, and many others. When first published, The Beast was considered every bit the equal Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and sold over 500,000 copies. More than just a fascinating slice of Denver history, this book—and Lindsey’s court— offered widespread social change in the United States.
291 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1971
About the author
Benjamin Barr Lindsey
28 books9 followersBenjamin Barr Lindsey was an American judge and social reformer. He was a pioneer of the juvenile court system.
He wrote a quite controversial book about a trial marriage system (what he called "companionate marriage").
He wrote a quite controversial book about a trial marriage system (what he called "companionate marriage").
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June 25, 2019
Benjamin Barr Lindsey was a lawyer, judge and high-minded political player in Denver during the first decades of the 20th century, the Beast of the title is the System of corporate graft which lay in wait to pounce on anyone who opposed it, this book a remarkable exposé of how the author's attempts to stalk it were resisted with every manorr of bribe, threat, slander and skulduggery.
Initially Lindsey worked with the Republicans in partnership with a similarly idealistic lawyer who became a senator and soon after went on the take. Lindsey then tried the Democrats, only to discover the same crooked plutocracy.
Ballot-stuffing, "juggling" anti-corporation bills to the bottom of the pile, even armed shootouts at the City Hall were a familiar part of Colorado politics at that time. The "Boss" of both parties were men chosen by the major corporations, they in turn handed out jobs for the boys, even the Supreme Court represented the vested interests.
In this passage, an increasingly despondent Lindsey begins to realise just how endemic the corruption was:
'There was much voluble concern as to which campaign committee would get the largest contributions; and it began to dawn upon me that instead of being a contest of parties, the election was going to be a contest of corporations, through their paid agents, for the control of the machinery of government. The "workers'' in the ranks of the fight were working for nothing, apparently, but the promise of this or that picayune "job" under the politicians. The politicians were struggling for nothing, apparently, but the offices and the graft to which they hoped to be elected. The corporations, over them all, were apparently using them all to keep themselves above the laws by owning the sources and the agents of the law.'
Alongside with his attempts to reform the voting laws of the state, Lindsey established the first unofficial Juvenile Court in America. The story of how he was inspired to do this, told in chapter five involving a boy he initially sentenced to jail for stealing a lump of coal off a railway line, is well worth reading. As he put it, 'I could help the children, if I could not help the "grown-ups."'
As for resisting the temptation to play the game, Lindsey readily admits that he could be accused of not being practical or lacking ambition. His enemies called him a "grand-stander," and maybe he was, he certainly gave that impression, as well as leaving you with the feeling that he was the only honest man in Colorado.
I also found it incredible just how many of his enemies supposedly admitted to him that they were on the graft; he has pretty much all of them confess it to him direct, which seems unlikely. And yet I believed him throughout. I even had a look online to investigate the retrospective reputations of the political operators he trashed. Sure, they were grafters one and all.
They were then, and they are now.
Initially Lindsey worked with the Republicans in partnership with a similarly idealistic lawyer who became a senator and soon after went on the take. Lindsey then tried the Democrats, only to discover the same crooked plutocracy.
Ballot-stuffing, "juggling" anti-corporation bills to the bottom of the pile, even armed shootouts at the City Hall were a familiar part of Colorado politics at that time. The "Boss" of both parties were men chosen by the major corporations, they in turn handed out jobs for the boys, even the Supreme Court represented the vested interests.
In this passage, an increasingly despondent Lindsey begins to realise just how endemic the corruption was:
'There was much voluble concern as to which campaign committee would get the largest contributions; and it began to dawn upon me that instead of being a contest of parties, the election was going to be a contest of corporations, through their paid agents, for the control of the machinery of government. The "workers'' in the ranks of the fight were working for nothing, apparently, but the promise of this or that picayune "job" under the politicians. The politicians were struggling for nothing, apparently, but the offices and the graft to which they hoped to be elected. The corporations, over them all, were apparently using them all to keep themselves above the laws by owning the sources and the agents of the law.'
Alongside with his attempts to reform the voting laws of the state, Lindsey established the first unofficial Juvenile Court in America. The story of how he was inspired to do this, told in chapter five involving a boy he initially sentenced to jail for stealing a lump of coal off a railway line, is well worth reading. As he put it, 'I could help the children, if I could not help the "grown-ups."'
As for resisting the temptation to play the game, Lindsey readily admits that he could be accused of not being practical or lacking ambition. His enemies called him a "grand-stander," and maybe he was, he certainly gave that impression, as well as leaving you with the feeling that he was the only honest man in Colorado.
I also found it incredible just how many of his enemies supposedly admitted to him that they were on the graft; he has pretty much all of them confess it to him direct, which seems unlikely. And yet I believed him throughout. I even had a look online to investigate the retrospective reputations of the political operators he trashed. Sure, they were grafters one and all.
They were then, and they are now.
Displaying 1 of 1 review