Educators’ Perspective continued from page 11
Educators’ Perspective continued from page 11
who felt that the Mercantile Agency was spying on them in what they described as a“ system of espionage.”
The Mercantile Agency grew slowly because of poor economic conditions, and it never really caught on in the South until after Lewis Tappan retired from the firm in 1849. His two successors, Benjamin Douglas and Robert Graham Dun( who renamed the company after himself in 1859), were able to expand the business into the South because of their ambivalence towards abolition. This allowed the company to offer a truly nationwide service and to dominate the field of credit ratings for years as the company continued to improve and expand its credit reporting abilities.
In 1933, R. G. Dun & Co. merged with its biggest competitor, The Bradstreet Companies, to form Dun & Bradstreet: a company which today claims to have“ compiled the most comprehensive and accurate repository of business data on the planet.”
The task Lewis Tappan set out to achieve in 1841 eventually succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, providing much-needed credit ratings and more for businesses worldwide.
Brian Grinder is a professor at Eastern Washington University and a member of Financial History’ s editorial board. Dr. Dan Cooper is the president of Active Learning Technologies.
Sources
Atherton, Lewis E.“ The Problem of Credit Rating in the Ante-Bellum South.” The Journal of Southern History. Vol. 12, pgs. 534 – 556. 1946.
Foulke, Roy A. The Sinews of American Commerce. New York, NY. 1941.
Madison, James H.“ The Evolution of Commercial Credit Reporting Agencies in Nineteenth-Century America.” The Business History Review. Vol. 48, pgs. 164-186. 1974.
The Mercantile Agency: The Story of Impartial Credit Reporting. New York, NY: Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. 1941.
Norris, James D. R. G. Dun & Co., 1841 – 1900: The Development of Credit-reporting in the Nineteenth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1978.
Olegario, Rowena. A Culture of Credit: Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2006.
Sandage, Scott A. Born Losers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2009.
Thoreau, Henry D. The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau. New York, NY: New York University Press. 1958.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery. Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University. 1969.
38 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Winter 2017 | www. MoAF. org