n termination of the legislation which
has damned up normal liquidation of these mortgages for more than eight
years might well result in an emergency more acute than that which the
original legislation was intended to alleviate.'"[1730]

And meantime the Court had sustained legislation of the State of New
York under which a mortgagee of real property was denied a deficiency
judgment in a foreclosure suit where the State court found that the
value of the property purchased by the mortgagee at the foreclosure sale
was equal to the debt secured by the mortgage.[1731] "Mortgagees," the
Court said, "are constitutionally entitled to no more than payment in
full. * * * To hold that mortgagees are entitled under the contract
clause to retain the advantages of a forced sale would be to dignify
into a constitutionally protected property right their chance to get
more than the amount of their contracts. * * * The contract clause does
not protect such a strategical, procedural advantage."[1732]

Statistical Data Pertinent to the Clause

The obligation of contracts clause attained the high point of its
importance in our Constitutional Law in the years immediately following
the Civil War.[1733] Between 1865 and 1873 there were twenty cases in
which State acts were held invalid under the clause, of which twelve
involved public contracts. During the next fifteen years, which was the
period of Waite's chief justiceship, twenty-nine cases reached the Court
in which State legislation was set aside under the clause. Twenty-four
of these involved public contracts. The decline of the importance of the
clause as a title in Constitutional Law began under Chief Justice Fuller
(1888 to 1910). During this period less than 25% of the cases involving
the validity of State legislation involved this rubric. In twenty-eight
of these cases, of which only two involved private contracts, the
statute involved was set aside. During Chief Justice White's term (1910
to 1921) the proportion of contract cases shrank to 15%, and in that of
Chief Justice Taft, to 9%.[1734]

In recent years the clause has appeared to undergo something of a
revival, not however as a protection of public grants, but as a
protection of private credits. During the Depression, which began in
1929 and deepened in 1932, State legislatures enacted numerous
moratorium statutes, and beginning with Home Loan Association _v._
Blaisdell, which was decided in 1934, the Court was required