Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

The large number of cases on record that have been amicably settled by arbitration within the past few years, in which law would have been formerly considered indispensable, seem to point to a period, probably not far distant, when arbitration will be the great and ultimate court of appeal in the large majority of civil cases. Several considerations will make it the most popular. It is cheaper, less complicated, not subject to vexatious delay; it is more equitable, and the members composing the Arbitration Committees are business men, who are quick to discern, accurate in perception, sound in judgment and decisive in drawing their conclusions on business principles.

The expense of arbitration is a mere trifle compared with the enormous sums swallowed up in litigation.

Transactions involving millions of dollars annually in the Stock Exchange are made subject to settlement by this method of arbitration in the event of any difference of opinion arising in any particular case. Very few instances occur in which there is any necessity to carry the case beyond the jurisdiction of the Arbitration Committee.

The number of cases actually settled in this way would probably cost half a million dollars annually if they had to be brought into court, to say nothing of the incidental expenses, which would amount to as much more, arising from delay, on the scale of present charges by the legal profession, even leaving out our own Evarts, who is probably the Boss charger of the Bar.

The success attending the system at the Stock Exchange, I think, goes far to prove that the method might be universally extended to the great pecuniary interest and personal comfort of business men throughout the country, for the adjustment of their misunderstandings and grievances among one another.

My object in writing upon this subject has for its basis the hope that this chapter may catch the eye of some of our great merchants in this and other large cities, and that it may suggest to those of them who have not contemplated the subject already, the advisability and necessity of establishing for themselves a similar method of arbitration to that which has been so successful in the Stock Exchange, to be final and without appeal, in their respective business affairs.

Experience has fully demonstrated that trial by jury is in innumerable instances a signal failure; especially has this been so since what is known as “jury fixing” has become so common in the courts. The practice of bribing jurors has now become a secret profession, and is so ably conducted that it is almost impossible, except in rare instances, to expose it.

But apart from this vicious and criminal practice of tampering with juries, there are many other reasons why it is next to impossible, in a large variety of instances, to obtain justice from an ordinary jury.

Human sympathy plays a very important part in the verdicts of juries generally. I mean by this, class sympathy. A business man who is regarded by the community as rich and powerful, can hardly expect justice from a common jury unless the party opposed to him occupies a similar station in society. Where the position of either the plaintiff or defendant calls forth sympathy with regard to worldly means, in the large majority of cases the ordinary jurors will bring in a verdict in favor of the man of small or moderate means, believing that they are in duty bound to sympathize with the oppressed. In a case where a clerk or a woman, for instance, is a party to the suit, it is next to impossible for a man of means to receive equity at the hands of the great palladium of our liberty. I am sorry it is so, but I speak feelingly in this matter, as I have myself been a victim of this unworthy class prejudice, in a country where all men are theoretically equal.

Counsel usually make a great display over the cases of impecunious clients, out of all proportion to their magnitude. Mole hills become ostensibly transformed into mountains in the eye of the highly imaginative lawyer, who works himself up into such a dramatic pitch of enthusiasm about the wrongs of his client, that he appears to be in dead earnest. He infuses the same feeling into the jury, who are beguiled into solemnity by the force of forensic oratory, and fail to appreciate the farcical side of the case, but are totally swayed by sentiment and prejudice, to the utter exclusion of the evidence.