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God and Dun & Bradstreet, 1841–1851

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Bertram Wyatt-Brown
Bertram Wyatt-Brown
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Western Reserve University
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Abstract

The curious fusion of business failure and evangelical Christianity that initiated the United States' largest credit-reporting agency is explored in this portrait of The Mercantile Agency's founder, Lewis Tappan.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , Winter 1966 , pp. 432 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966

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References

1 See Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, “Partners in Piety, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Evangelical Abolitionists” (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1963)Google Scholar; Tappan, Lewis, Arthur Tappan (New York, 1870)Google Scholar. The author is currently preparing a biography of Lewis Tappan.

2 The remainder of his commitments were picked up by John Tappan, another wealthy brother in the French import business in Boston, see Tappan, Diary, 1827–1828, Lewis Tappan MSS (Library of Congress). Hereinafter all citations are from this collection, unless otherwise stated. There were five Tappan brothers: Benjamin (1773–1857), an Ohio judge and U.S. Senator; William (1779–1855), a New York storekeeper; John (1781–1871); Charles (1784–1875), a Boston bookseller and publisher; Arthur (1786–1865); and Lewis (1788–1873).

3 Tappan, Arthur Tappan, 70–73; see Resseguie, Harry E., “Alexander Tumey Stewart and the Development of the Department Store, 1823–1876,” Business History Review XXXIX (Autumn, 1965), 301–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James D. Norris, “One-Price Policy among Antebellum Country Stores,” ibid., XXXVI (Winter, 1962), 455; see also, Foulke, Roy Anderson, The Sinews of American Commerce (New York, 1941), 35.Google Scholar

4 Scoville, Joseph A. [pseud., Walter Barrett], The Old Merchants of New York City (5 vols., New York, 1885), I, 230–31Google Scholar; Tappan, Arthur Tappan, 91–96, 287, 339, 415–18; Tappan Diary, August, 1828-Jan., 1829; Thompson, Joseph P., Memoir of David Hale (New York, 1850), 47–54.Google Scholar

5 Tappan, Arthur Tappan, 279–81; on loss of his southern trade, see, Atherton, Lewis E., The Southern Country Store 1800–1860 (Baton Rouge, 1949), 113–14, 140.Google Scholar

6 Tappan to Charles Tappan, November 23, 1839, Letterbook.

7 Tappan to Arthur Tappan, February 5, 1840, ibid.; Tappan Diary, October 21, 1839.

8 Tappan, Diary, June 22, 1841; Scoville, Old Merchants, I, 324.

9 Tappan to Arthur Tappan, February 5, 1840, Letterbook.

10 Diary, August 10, 1841.

11 E. G. Loring to Arthur Tappan & Company, December 10, 1838, Ellis Gray Loring Letterbook (Houghton Library, Harvard University).

12 Vose, Edward Neville, Seventy-Five Years of the Mercantile Agency: H. G. Dun & Co., 1841–1916 (New York, 1916), 12–13Google Scholar; see also Atherton, Southern Country Store, 113–14, on previous willingness to introduce respectable customers to other New York houses.

13 See Resseguie, “Alexander Turney Stewart,” for an example of one merchant who escaped this problem in the depressions of his career. See also, Foulke, Sinews of Commerce, 289–90; Atherton, Lewis E., The Pioneer Merchant in Mid-America. University of Missouri Studies, XIV, (Columbia, April 1, 1939), 108–109, 112–13Google Scholar; Atherton, Southern Country Store, 117–21.

14 Foulke, Sinews of Commerce, 283.

15 Tappan in New York Evening Post, July 8, 1837.

16 Tappan, , Is It Right to be Rich? (New York, 1869), 14.Google Scholar

17 Tappan to Benjamin Tappan, December 12, 1843, Letterbook.

18 Tappan to Henry Edwards, September 10, 1844, Letterbook.

19 Tappan to Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, October 1, 1857, Letterbook.

20 Henry De Puy to Salmon P. Chase, June 17, 1848, Salmon Portland Chase MSS (Library of Congress).

21 America's Advancement, 1875, quoted by Vose, 75 Years of the Merchantile Agency, 32; P. M. Ross, The Accountant's Own Book and Business Man's Manual, quoted by Foulke, Sinews of Commerce, 289–90, contrasting the fraud practiced at the time with the need for better information; Tappan, Diary, July 9, 1841, American Missionary Association MSS (Fisk University), a journal pertaining to the Mercantile Agency, formerly located in the American Missionary Association offices in New York City. Lewis Tappan did promise to give up the experiment, but Arthur naturally demurred in spite of his ill-health, see Tappan, Diary, June 22, 1841.

22 Tappan, Diary, February [?], 1844, AMA MSS (Fisk).

23 E. G. Loring to Tappan, June 2, 22, August 7, 1841, Loring Letterbook (Houghton Library); Tappan, Diary, September 14, 1841, AMA MSS (Fisk); Tappan to R. S. Baldwin, June 7, 1841, Roger Sherman Baldwin MSS (Special Collections, Yale University Library); LT to J. G. Birney, March 10, 1846, Letterbook.

24 Tappan, Diary, June 3, 21, 22, 25, 26, July 7, August 6, 1841, AMA MSS (Fisk).

25 Ibid., July 7, 1841.

26 Tappan, Diary, August 10, 1841.

27 Morning Courier and New York Enquirer, June 22, 1841, with quotations from Norfolk Beacon. See also Tappan, Diary, June 22, 1841.

28 Tappan, Diary, June 22, 1841, AMA MSS (Fisk).

29 Ibid., August 16, 1841.

30 Ibid., August 16, 24, 1841, February 24, July 13, November 8, 1842.

31 Tappan to Charles Stoddard, February 6, 1843, Letterbook.

32 Tappan to Lewis Tappan Stoddard, February 6, 1843, ibid.

33 Tappan, printed circular, September 15, 1842, in Diary, AMA MSS (Fisk); see also another circular, August 8, 1843, ibid, and one of January 2, 1844.

34 See, Tappan, Diary, August 8, 1843 (quotation), AMA MSS (Fisk); ibid., September 1, 1842, February 10, 1843, February [?], 1845, printed card; Foulke, Sinews of Commerce, 290.

35 Tappan, Diary, September 1, 15, 1842; printed circular, October 26, 1842; August 8, 1843; January [?], 1844, printed circular; January 2, 1844; quotation from February [?], 1844 printed circular, AMA MSS (Fisk).

36 January [?], 1844, ibid.; ibid., December 1, 1844.

37 Ibid., June 29, September 15, 1842; traveling agents in Tappan's day were confined to Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York; see Foulke, Sinews of Commerce, 307–308, 334.

38 Tappan to LaFayette S. Foster, December 26, 1844 (Miscellaneous Papers, Special Collections, New York Public Library); Tappan, Diary, July 22, 1842, February 23, 1843, AMA MSS (Fisk); Tappan to Dennis Jones, March 13, 1843, Letterbook.

39 Tappan, Diary, June 4, 1844, printed circular, AMA MSS (Fisk).

40 Printed circular of January 20, 1847, Tappan, Diary, AMA MSS (Fisk), Herald quoted by Albion, Robert G., The Rise of New York Port, [1825–1860] (New York, 1939), 256.Google Scholar

41 Dunbar, Edward E., Statement of the Controversy between Lewis Tappan and Edward E. Dunbar (New York, 1846), 72Google Scholar; see also ibid., card printed in New York Journal of Commerce, August 30, 1842.

42 Dunbar, Statement of Controversy, 12; Tappan, Diary, January [?], 1844, AMA MSS (Fisk).

43 Tappan to Elizur Wright, October 15, November 11, 1844, Letterbook; Tappan to Amos A. Phelps, October 14, November 19, 1844, Letterbook; Phelps to Tappan, November [?], 1844.

44 Dunbar, Statement of Controversy, 11; Tappan, Diary, July 1, 1844, printed circular, AMA MSS (Fisk); Vose, 75 Years of Mercantile Agency, 20; Tappan to Lewis Tappan Stoddard, February 6, 1843, Letterbook.

45 Tappan to Henry Edwards, September 10, 1844, ibid.

46 Tappan to Amos A. Phelps, January 13, 1845, Amos A. Phelps MSS (Boston Public Library). Mrs. Virginia Roberts of Colorado State University, to whom I am deeply grateful for obtaining the following information, has checked the original credit reports of the Mercantile Agency now deposited at the Baker Library, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University. Although the haphazard manner of making entries (there are 2500 credit-report ledgers), makes confirmation difficult, it does appear that few entries on southern firms date earlier than 1845. In that year agents toured the South. With the exception of two locations in Virginia (Norfolk and Alexandria) and one in Alabama, the company had little or no information about southern merchants before then.

47 Tappan to Dunbar, January 29, 1845, Letterbook. Dunbar was then in Fayetteville, North Carolina on his way to South Carolina.

48 Ibid.; see also Tappan, Diary, January 6, 1845, printed card announcing extension of business without mention of this rearrangement nor in circular of February 10, 1845.

49 Dunbar to Tappan, February 13 or 23, (illegible), 1845, Dunbar, Statement of Controversy, 17.

50 Tappan to William Goodrich, January 29, 1845, Tappan to Dunbar, February 10, 1845, Dunbar, Statement of Controversy, 19.

51 Tappan to Goodrich, March 4, 1845, ibid., 21.

52 Ibid., 21. Dunbar might be considered an unreliable source in view of his later actions, but undoubtedly the letters in unfriendly hands would have been very damaging. In reprinting letters of Tappan, he was scrupulously accurate, insofar as they can be checked against Tappan's letterbook.

53 Ibid., 23, see also, 22.

54 Ibid., 24, see also Tappan to E. E. Dunbar, August 12, 1844 (indicating already a certain suspicion between them) Letterbook.

55 Dunbar, Statement of Controversy, 55. Mrs. Roberts' (see note 46) investigation of the Mercantile Agency ledgers bears out the importance of the Dunbar-Goodrich expedition in soliciting southern data.

56 Dunbar to Tappan, December 31, 1845, Tappan to Dunbar, January 5, 1846, ibid., 25. See also Tappan to Dunbar, January 7, 14, 25, 1846, Letterbook.

57 Ibid., 26.

58 Ibid., 3–6, 45–86; Tappan to A. Crist (a referee), June 16, 1846, Letterbook; apparently the matter was not fully settled until the end of August, 1846, although the decision was handed down in June, 1846, see Susanna Aspinwall Tappan to Julia Tappan, August 24, 1846, transcript by author of letters in a private Tappan collection.

59 Vose, 75 Years of Mercantile Agency, 27.

60 See Tappan to Woodward & Dusenberry, November 4, 1846; Tappan to Joseph W. Clary, Boston, October 3, 7, 10, 20, November 3, 14, 1846; Tappan to Joseph L. Chester, Philadelphia, October 9, 10, 1846; Tappan to Stephen Pearl Andrews, June 5, 1846; Tappan to Edward Russell, Boston, October 28, 1846, Letterbook.

61 Tappan to Benjamin Douglass, November 12, 1846; Tappan to William Gordon, Boston, February 3, 1846, ibid.; Tappan, Diary, August 3, 27, 1846, AMA MSS (Fisk); Tappan to Arthur Tappan, October 28, 1848, letterbook.

62 Foulke, Sinews of Commerce, 290; Scoville, Old Merchants, I, 236.

63 Tappan to Arthur Tappan, October 28, 1848, Letterbook.

64 Tappan to David Hale, August 19, 1847; Tappan to Joseph Sturge, February 20, 1849, Letterbook, (quotation).

65 Tappan to John Tappan, October 15, 1849, Letterbook.

66 Ibid., October 6, 1849.

67 Tappan, Diary, December 18, 23, 1851; New York Herald, December 12, 1851; Vose, 75 Years of Mercantile Agency, 48–50; Foulke, Sinews of Commerce, 292–93; New York Evening Post, December 24, 1851.

68 Tappan to John Tappan, October 15, 1849, Letterbook; an interesting general discussion of the interrelationship of religious percepts and economic growth, reviewing in part the familiar works in the area, is found in Helleiner, Karl F., “Moral Conditions of Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic History, XI (Spring, 1951), 97–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar