A Culture of Credit

Download or read book A Culture of Credit written by Rowena OLEGARIO and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Rowena Olegario traces the way resistance, mutual suspicion, skepticism, and legal challenges were overcome in the relentless quest to make information on business borrowers more accurate and available.