Places where all conditions of men dwelt together in squalor, buying favors from corrupt jailers, gambling and carousing with casual visitors, rotting away their characters, were the debtors' prisons of England a century ago. Had not Charles Dickens exposed their evils (David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, etc.), had not the civilized world abolished imprisonment for debt, most citizens of the U. S. might have languished in durance vile during the years of Depression.
Although imprisonment for debt has been abolished, creditors may still obtain judgments and if the debtor does not obey the...