THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY 373 



as contempt of court. 5 The upshot is that the decrees of the federal 

 court have for years been in abeyance and the legal rights of the bond- 

 holders have not been enforced. This incident renders it more than 

 doubtful whether the federal courts could have prevented a number of 

 states from repudiating their debts even if the eleventh amendment 

 had never been added to the constitution. In the words of Lincoln: 



In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public 

 sentiment, nothing can fail ; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who 

 moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces 

 decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed. 8 



If the status of public opinion sometimes paralyzes the activity of 

 prosecuting attorneys and nullifies the decrees of courts, it also occa- 

 sionally enforces a higher standard of business conduct than the law 

 requires. Numberless oral agreements are every day faithfully observed 

 which can not be enforced at law. Many a man's word is as good as 

 his bond. Every social group has a code of honor which in some re- 

 spects exceeds the letter of the law. Probably "Wall Street" suggests 

 a low order of cunning to most minds, and yet there is not place where 

 certain kinds of contracts are more scrupulously observed. The whole 

 fabric of credit so essential to modern business rests upon men keeping 

 faith, and is in the main quite independent of the compulsory processes 

 of the courts. Justice secured by means of litigation is frequently so 

 expensive that it comes too high. Throughout the silver controversy the 

 members of the New York Clearing House steadfastly refrained from 

 paying their daily balances in silver, though Congress required the 

 Clearing House rule forbidding such payments to be rescinded. 7 

 During the Civil War, Massachusetts paid the interest on her bonds in 

 gold, "though it cost her sometimes nearly three for one to keep her 

 faith." 8 More noteworthy was the maintenance of the gold standard on 

 the Pacific Slope. Legally debtors in California had as much right to 

 tender greenbacks in full discharge of their debts as in any other part 

 of the country, but the fact that a man could not tender greenbacks 

 without injuring his credit and losing standing among business men 

 effectually prevented such conduct. Self-interest resulted in a higher 

 standard of business honor than the law demanded. In like manner 

 competition at the present time frequently compels a higher standard of 

 efficiency and honor among men than the law requires. 



It is difficult to see why any one with any practical experience of business 

 should take the law of the matter as a guide. The law is a very cumbrous, slow 



s I am indebted to the Dean of the University of Missouri for this infor- 

 mation. 



e ' ' Debates of Lincoln and Douglas, ' ' op. cit., p. 82. 



7 Horace White, ' ' Money and Banking, ' ' fourth edition, p. 171. 



s James Eussell Lowell, "Prose Works, Essay on Democracy," Vol. 6, p. 11. 



