Boy Slaves (1939)

Roy Gordon: Judge

Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Judge : [Addresses the court]  Gentlemen, my great-great grandfather came to this country in a ship that was nothing more than a barge. He brought his sons. With their own hands they built a home out of the wilderness. One of those sons died in the War of the Revolution. The other served in the first Congress. Their sons after them went west, with the wild country; built railroads, bridges; served the government. All of them: pioneers, builders, soldiers, and statesman. And all for what? Just one thing: to build a state - a state in which their children could live as free men. I've served that state forty years. During that time I've experienced every emotion for it: pride, fear, resentment. This is the first time in my years of service that I feel... shame. I'm ashamed that even one man within the state should hold in contempt the principles for which our fathers died. I accuse these men of relentless, unmerciful cruelty. I lay the murders of Jesse Thompson and Peter Graff at their door

  [Speaks directly to the youths on trial] 

  Judge : What can I say to you, but to ask you to forgive us? We've become so enamored with the symbols of liberty, we've forgotten its basic principles. You are very bitter toward us, but perhaps later, you may learn to forgive us. I remand you to the state farm, where the state will have a chance to pay its debt to you, if that be possible; where you will be provided for, taught a trade, given the opportunity to be children. I'll see to that. As for your debts to Mister Albee, they were made by minors, and I hereby declare them void.

  Albee : You can't do that, judge!

  Judge : Mister Albee, I hold you for federal grand jury on the charge of peonage. And while in jail you might study the works of Abraham Lincoln.