JUDGE

Background.

Ben B. Lindsey understood what it was like to be a troubled youth. His father, a Confederate veteran, had moved the family to Colorado when Ben was eleven and committed suicide five years later. Ben left school to support his family, working simultaneously as a janitor, a newspaper carrier, and an office boy to a lawyer. Overwork and despair drove Ben to attempt suicide at nineteen, though his failure inspired him to change direction. He began to read law, and though not a high school graduate, at age twenty-five he was admitted to the Colorado bar.

Lindsey's Awakening.

In 1899 Lindsey became a public guardian and administrator, a minor position in Colorado's rudimentary public welfare system. Two years later he was appointed a county judge. He later recalled a case from about this time of a young boy caught stealing coal. Under common law, children older than the age of seven...