The Mercantile Agency: A Curious Relationship of Credit Reporting and Abolitionism
Lewis Tappan is remembered as a strong-minded individual in the pursuit of abolitionism, but the early records of the Mercantile Agency of New York present a businessman who may have been just as self-righteous as he was righteous. Nonetheless, his ambition created the first systematic scheme for credit reporting. Lewis Tappan was born in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1788, one of five brothers. Following in the commercial footsteps of his father, Tappan amassed a small fortu