Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ It might provide that no banking business should be done except by corporations, and that corporations should not be formed or continue with less than a surplus of 10 per cent, both provisions being for the purpose of assuring safety. If, instead of that, it allows the plaintiffs to keep on without incorporation, and with a smaller surplus, they cannot complain that the safer banks will outstrip them as the result of the law. ”

“ If, as we have decided, the law might compel the contribution on the grounds that we have stated, it may try to bring about the same result by the creation of motives less compulsory than command and of disadvantages in holding aloof less peremptory than an immediate stop. We shall not go through the details of minute criticism urged by the appellants, in most if not all of which they are in no way concerned. ”