¹ Stiglitz, Joseph E., “Prize Lecture: Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics,” 20 11 2012, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2001/stiglitz-lecture.htmlGoogle Scholar; Shapiro, Carl and Varian, Hal, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston, 1998)Google Scholar. Anthony Giddens has noted that when money made possible anonymous transactions and exchange over long distances, it also meant that parties to exchange lost touch with each other, requiring new means of surveillance and verification in the economy. Giddens, Anthony, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Vol. 1, Property, Power and the State (Berkeley, 1981), 115–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² The literature on semiotics and symbols is vast. Some of the works I have found useful are Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Douglas, Mary, How Institutions Think (New York, 2006)Google Scholar. Symbols may signal—that is, carry information as we commonly think of it—but obliquely, often by representing one thing as something else (a national leader as a father figure) or making claims of universality (about human nature, gender, race, or some other category of identity) or structuring how we understand and see the world (about what is true, just, beautiful).

³ On the history of credit reporting, see Cohen, Barry, “Constructing an Uncertain Economy: Credit Reporting and Credit Rating in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2012Google Scholar. Cohen examines the labor and practices of credit agencies in the nineteenth century as intermediaries who negotiated between constraints in legal, organizational, and market environments. Other major recent works are Olegario, Rowena, A Culture of Credit: Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lauer, Josh, “From Rumor to Written Record: Credit Reporting and the Invention of Financial Identity in Nineteenth Century America,” Technology and Culture 49 (04 2008): 301–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sandage, Scott, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge, Mass., 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berghoff, Hartmut, “Civilizing Capitalism? The Beginnings of Credit Rating in the United States and Germany,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 45 (Fall 2009): 9–28Google Scholar.

⁴ Granovetter, Mark, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91 (11 1985): 481–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zelizer, Viviana, The Social Meaning of Money (New York, 1994)Google Scholar.

⁵ See, for example, Klein, Daniel, ed., Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct (Ann Arbor, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Greif, Avner, “Reputation Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders,” Journal of Economic History 49 (12 1989): 8576–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷ Hidy, Ralph, “Credit Rating before Dun and Bradstreet,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 13, no. 6 (12 1939): 81–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Atherton, Lewis, “The Problem of Credit Rating in the Ante-Bellum South,” Journal of Southern History 12, no. 4 (1946): 534–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the activities of Sheldon Church in this regard, see Foulke, Roy A., The Sinews of American Commerce (New York, 1941), 360–68Google Scholar.

⁸ Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, “God and Dun & Bradstreet, 1841–1851,” Business History Review 40 (Winter 1966): 433–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ The general history of mercantile credit and credit reporting in the nineteenth century is well covered in Olegario, Culture of Credit; Norris, James, R. G. Dun & Co., 1841–1900: The Development of Credit-Reporting in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1978)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Wyatt-Brown, , “God and Dun & Bradstreet,” 437, 441Google Scholar.

¹¹ Quoted in Lauer, , “From Rumor to Written Record,” 303Google Scholar.

¹² “Mercantile Agency,” New-York City and Co-Partnership Directory for 1843 & 1844 (New York, [1843]), n.p.Google Scholar, quoted in Lauer, “From Rumor to Written Record.”

¹³ Agency, Mercantile, Reports of the Four Leading Cases against the Mercantile Agency for Slander and Libel: Beardsley vs. Tappan, U.S. Supreme Court, Billings vs. Russell, Supreme Jud., Court, Mass., Ormsby vs. Douglass, Court of Appeals, N.Y., the Commonwealth vs. Stacey, Court of C.P., Pa. (New York, 1873), 170Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See Sandage, Born Losers, on character.

¹⁵ Wyatt-Brown, , “God and Dun & Bradstreet,” 447Google Scholar.

¹⁶ There was also a fear that credit used to encourage sales would create competitive rounds of customer poaching. Hunt, Robert, “A Century of Consumer Credit Reporting in America,” Working Paper no. 5-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, 06 2005Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Miller, Margaret J., “Credit Reporting Systems around the Globe: The State of the Art in Public Credit Registries and Private Credit Reporting Firms,” in Credit Reporting Systems and the International Economy, ed. Miller, Margaret J. (Cambridge, Mass., 2003)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Wyatt-Brown, , “God and Dun & Bradstreet,” 441Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Research on Slander and Libel Cases, 1851–1925 v. 23, Subseries B: Legal records, 1851–1933, Collection, R. G. Dun, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Mass. (hereafter, R. G. Dun Collection)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Research on Slander and Libel Cases, 1851–1925, R. G. Dun Collection.

²¹ Balleisen, Edward discusses the problems of nineteenth-century bankruptcy in Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, 2001)Google Scholar.

²² Olegario, , Culture of Credit, 167–68Google Scholar.

²³ Madison, James, “The Evolution of Credit Reporting Agencies in Nineteenth-Century America,” Business History Review 48 (Summer 1974): 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁵ Ibid. See also Sandage, , Born Losers, 150Google Scholar.

²⁶ Johnson v. Bradstreet Company (1886), 77 Georgia 172, quoted in Research on Slander and Libel cases, 1851–1925, 53, R. G. Dun Collection.

²⁷ Madison, , “The Evolution of Credit Reporting Agencies,” 169Google Scholar.

²⁸ Olegario, , Culture of Credit, 167–70Google Scholar.

²⁹ Madison, , “The Evolution of Credit Reporting Agencies,” 170Google Scholar.

³⁰ Lauer, , “From Rumor to Written Record,” 319–20Google Scholar.

³¹ Madison, , “The Evolution of Credit Reporting Agencies,” 25Google Scholar.

³² Ibid., 183.

³³ Agency, Mercantile, Reports of Four Leading Cases, 30Google Scholar.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid., 60–61.

³⁶ On performativity in finance, see MacKenzie, Donald, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 16–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ Ibid., 82–85.

³⁸ Ibid., 127.

³⁹ The reason was somewhat technical. Beardsley's attorney had been able to introduce testimony that Tappan had tried to “make good” on his claim that the Beardsleys were getting a divorce, importuning Mrs. Beardsley into filing for a divorce well after the original report had been issued. This, the High Court ruled, should not have been permitted at the trial. 77 U.S. 427.

⁴⁰ Agency, Mercantile, Reports of Four Leading Cases, 109–110Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Ibid., 118.

⁴² Ormsby v. Douglass, 37 N.Y. 477. Madison, , “The Evolution of Credit Reporting Agencies,” 171Google Scholar.

⁴³ Research on Slander and Libel Cases, 1851–1925, 486, R. G. Dun Collection.

⁴⁴ Robbins, Charles, “Commercial Agencies,” American Law Register 37, no. 5 (05 1889): 259Google Scholar, quoting Bradstreet Co. v. Gill, Superior Court of Texas, 27 Nov. 1888.

⁴⁵ Norris, , R. G. Dun, 133Google Scholar. In Gibson v. Dun, a client who lost money based on a rating of a borrower lost his case for negligence against Dun, the courts accepting that there was no guarantee or warranty in the reports, so long as standard reporting procedures had been followed. In Eaton v. Avery (1880) the court ruled that when a merchant deceived a reporter it was the merchant who was liable for any loss incurred by the lender or creditor not the reporting agency. See Madison, , “The Evolution of Credit Reporting Agencies,” 180Google Scholar; Olegario, , Culture of Credit, 153Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Norris, , R. G. Dun, 26Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 44–46.

⁴⁸ Tappan, Lewis quoted in Norris, , R. G. Dun, 22Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Quoted in Sandage, , Born Losers, 143Google Scholar. Olegario, , Culture of Credit, 128, 141Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ The attorneys worked without pay in hopes that creditors would give them work collecting debts and handling bankruptcies, which led to charges that they had incentive to provide negative reports to encourage failure.

⁵¹ Madison, , “The Evolution of Credit Reporting Agencies,” 178–79Google Scholar.

⁵² Ormsby v. Douglass, 1858, is a key case in this respect, ruling that information conveyed in good faith with reasonable diligence was protected under privilege.

⁵³ Megill, Allan, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice (Chicago, 2007), 78–103Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 70. The continued reliance on narrative runs counter to predictions by theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Jean-François Lyotard that the age of instant information would negate or obviate narrative. In “A Message from Psychologists to Economists: Mere Predictability Doesn't Matter Like it Should (Without a Good Story Appended to it),” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 39 (1999): 29–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Robyn M. Dawes argues for the independence of quantitative information and narrative. The role of narrative in the economy has recently become a topic of interest. See, for example, Akerlof, George and Schiller, Robert, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism (Princeton, 2009)Google Scholar; and John Kay, “The Map is Not the Territory: An Essay on the State of Economics,” http://www.johnkay.com/2011/10/04/the-map-is-not-the-territory-an-essay-on-the-state-of-economics. An older argument along similar lines appears in Harrison, J. Michael and Kreps, David, “Speculative Investor Behavior in a Stock Market with Heterogeneous Expectations,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 92, no. 2 (1978): 323–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ Dun, & Bradstreet, , Report Writers Guide, General Suggestions and Examples: Narrative Form Reports (New York, 1944)Google Scholar. For other examples making the same point, see the Dun, & Bradstreet, house organ, The Wagon Wheel (04 1935), n.p.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Rabuzzi, Daniel, “Eighteenth-Century Commercial Mentalities as Reflected and Projected in Business Hand Books,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 2 (1995–1996): 169–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smail, John, “The Culture of Credit in Eighteenth-Century Commerce: The English Textile Industry,” Enterprise & Society 4, no. 2 (2003): 299–325CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Finn, Margot, The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge, U.K., 2003)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Sandage, , Born Losers, 147Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, quoted in Sandage, , Born Losers, 143Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Prendergast, William, Credit and Its Uses (New York, 1914 [1906 copyright]), 151Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ On narrative form, see White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Norris, , R. G. Dun, 51–52Google Scholar.

⁶² Ibid., 86–93.

⁶³ Zimmerman, T. J., “The Function and Work of the Commercial Agency,” in Credit and Collections: The Factors Involved and the Methods Pursued in Credit Operations, ed. Zimmerman, T. J. (Chicago, 1904), 47Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Norris, , R. G. Dun, 93–94Google Scholar; Lauer, , “From Rumor to Written Record,” 314Google Scholar; and Bruce G. Carruthers and Barry Cohen, “The Mechanization of Trust: Credit Rating in 19th-c. America” (unpublished manuscript). Nor did the ratings, even those for capital worth, reflect hard, standardized data. Many, indeed most of the firms that were rated kept either rudimentary books, or none at all. Without widely used and accepted standards of accounting, individual agents did calculations of net worth on a case-by-case basis. Instructions from the New York office provided general guidance on how to do this, but both the raw data and final figure reflected the judgment of the agent.

⁶⁵ Patterson, Kelly, “Credit Evaluation and Organizational Context: Decision-Making and R. G. Dun & Co.” (unpublished working paper)Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Prendergast, , Credit and Its Uses, 151Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Indeed, even simply listing a business in a rating book might imply a negative report, and hence be libelous. A subtle hint, intended or not, that received wide circulation could affect the commercial standing of a firm. Robbins, , “Commercial Agencies,” 257–64Google Scholar. A & B Moog v. R.G. Dun & Co., 1882, Folder 8, Box 3, Cases, 1851–1933, R. G. Dun Collection. Also Erber v. R. G. Dun (1882), 12 Fed Reporter, 526.

⁶⁸ Olegario, , Culture of Credit, 175–79Google Scholar; 189.

⁶⁹ Prendergast, , Credit and Its Uses, 183–84, 203Google Scholar. New York apparently passed a law that required merchants who obtained credit by representing that they kept books would be guilty of fraud if they defaulted and could not present the books to the creditor.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 213.

⁷¹ Olegario, , Culture of Credit, 181, 187, 194Google Scholar.

⁷² Norris, , R. G. Dun, 129, 135Google Scholar. Agency, Mercantile, Detailed Instructions to Reporters and Report Writers on the Arrangement of Reports (New York, 1918), 5Google Scholar.

⁷³ Agency, Mercantile, The Mercantile Agency Reporters' Manual, 2nd ed. (New York, 1902), 1, 7–8, 11Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 23.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 20.

⁷⁶ Massarene, W. R., “How Can We Make Our Reports Shake Hands?” Wagon Wheel (11 1935): 8Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Keefe, G., “Reports on Individuals,” Wagon Wheel (12 1935–Jan. 1936): 13Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Lassiter, O. L., “The Complete Interview,” Wagon Wheel (08–Sept. 1935), 15Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 9.

⁸⁰ For more, see Kenneth Lipartito, “The Narrative and the Algorithm” (unpublished paper).

⁸¹ Nevin, John, “The Equal Credit Opportunity Act: An Evaluation,” Journal of Marketing 43 (Spring 1979): 95–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸² Hyman, Louis, Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton, N.J., 2011), 173–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes that feminists argued that shifting credit evaluation to credit histories rather than demographic characteristics was a cure for discrimination, and since women often had less credit history, it was also necessary to track individuals throughout their economic lives.

⁸³ Rule, James, Private Lives and Public Surveillance (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, discusses the shift of privacy discourse toward fairness, accuracy and security, and away from the type, amount, or control and ownership of personal information.

⁸⁴ Privacy Study Group Trip Report Memo, 31 May 1972, Willis Ware Collection, Box 1, Folder 17, Credit Reporting, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.

⁸⁵ Capon, Noel, “Credit Scoring Systems: A Critical Analysis,” Journal of Marketing 46 (Spring 1982): 82–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1979 testimony, William Fair argued that race, gender, and religion should be included if they were shown to be valid predictors.

⁸⁶ Indeed, certain other legislation actually mandated the collection of just this sort of data. For example, the 1968 Consumer Credit Protection Act's Regulation Z required capturing of certain information about open-ended credit—date, amount, brief description of goods or services bought, name, city, and state of vendor.

⁸⁷ Although the legacy of discrimination and poverty still worked against those with little or no credit history, expanding the availability of credit would, presumably, correct that problem in time. As everyone got access to credit, everyone would have a behavioral pattern of credit use that could serve as the basis for his or her score.

⁸⁸ See, for example, Kelly, Jeanne, “Your Employer Is Pulling Your Credit! Are You Ready?” 20 11 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeanne-kelly/credit-check_b_2161027.htmlGoogle Scholar; and “Use of Credit Information in Employment 2012 Legislation,” 6 Mar. 2013, http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/banking/use-of-credit-info-in-employ-2012-legis.aspx.