Between Slavery and Capitalism by Ruef Martin;

Author:Ruef, Martin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

As the credit rating system became more institutionalized, it was also being deployed to manage more extreme forms of uncertainty surrounding business in the American South. In the antebellum era, the Mercantile Agency devoted much of its effort to evaluating well-established commission merchants in the region, categorizing their activities in single lines of trade and ascribing risk based on personal acquaintance and credit history. The era of Radical Reconstruction witnessed greater challenges for Dun’s credit reporters, who confronted not only a less stable political economy, but also smaller businesses in a greater array of industries with more enterprises that were engaged in multiple trades. Dun’s system of classification evolved accordingly to accommodate businesses that were hybrids of two or more industries. In the 1880s, the businesses that were rated by Dun continued to diverge from the heavily capitalized commission merchants, but the agency also rated more businesses with poor credit and those engaged in ambiguous lines of trade. In an effort to manage categorical uncertainty, the agency relied increasingly on professional credit reporters and a two-tiered system of classification that would suggest whether the trades pursued by a proprietor were unrelated or fell within a related group of trades.46

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