A Culture of Credit : Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (287 pages)
- Harvard Studies in Business History Series ; v.50 .
- Harvard Studies in Business History Series .
Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Mercantile Credit in Britain and America, 1700-1860 -- 2. A "System of Espionage": The Origins of the Credit-Reporting Firm -- 3. Character, Capacity, Capital: How to Be Creditworthy -- 4. Jewish Merchants and the Struggle over Transparency -- 5. Growth, Competition, Legitimacy: Credit Reporting in the Late Nineteenth Century -- 6. From Competition to Cooperation: The Birth of the Credit Man, 1890-1920 -- Epilogue: Business Credit Reporting in the Twenty-First Century -- Notes -- Index.
In the growing and dynamic economy of nineteenth-century America, businesses sold vast quantities of goods to one another, mostly on credit. This book explains how business people solved the problem of whom to trust--how they determined who was deserving of credit, and for how much.