Durance for Debt

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 court's order to pay he may be imprisoned for contempt of court. Debtors unable to pay can generally avoid such imprisonment by going into bankruptcy.

Last week in Rutland, Vt., court action spotlighted the case of Edmond Leo Mingo, 37, a farmer who knows what debtors' prison means.

Accused of having wrongfully sold some cattle on which a creditor had a mortgage of $1,370, a judgment for $350 was obtained against Edmond Mingo. Unable to pay, he was found guilty of contempt of court, sent to jail on June 4, 1934. Since then Samuel Insull has been tried three times, acquitted. Since then Farmer Mingo's mother, his only close relative. has died. Since then over 500 days have come & gone. Since then Farmer Mingo has stayed in jail. Last week he was still in jail because the jail commissioners, having received a petition from him to take the poor debtor's oath, were checking up to make sure that he really had no assets. And last week his fellow citizens were beginning to realize that it would have been cheaper for them to pay his $350 debt than to jail him, for at 75-c- a day, the town has already paid some $375 for his keep.

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