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Your Job Is Your Credit: Creating a Market for Loans to Salaried Employees in New York City, 1885–1920

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  • Easterly, Michael

Abstract

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a market in the personal debt of corporate and government employees was thriving in New York City and other major urban centers in the Northeastern andMidwestern United States. A set of shadowy entrepreneurs, colloquially known as “loan sharks,” offered short-term, high-rate advances that they called salary loans. Despite operating in violation of the law, primarily the prohibition against usury, the operations of these intermediaries had by 1912 reached an imposing scale. At least eighty-one such offices operated in Manhattan and Brooklyn alone, with millions of dollars in loans outstanding. Of these eighty-one offices, thirty-four belonged to interstate chains, the largest ofwhich stretched over sixtythree cities in the United States and Canada.

Suggested Citation

  • Easterly, Michael, 2009. "Your Job Is Your Credit: Creating a Market for Loans to Salaried Employees in New York City, 1885–1920," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 651-660, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:10:y:2009:i:04:p:651-660_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Malinowski, Mikołaj, 2012. "The costs and benefits of microfinance. The market for Dutch East India Company transportbriefen in 18th century Amsterdam," MPRA Paper 64632, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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