Tacoma Merchants Declare War on 'Dead Beats'
Fed up with unpaid tabs, Tacoma retailers organize a boycott committee and a $20 fine system to discipline customers who buy on credit.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Dead beats who systematically victimize local retail merchants are to be boycotted. Tonight the bulk of all the retail merchants in the city met at the Commercial Club and organized for self-defense. Their reasons for the organization of a commercial agency are to prevent 'dead beats' from securing any goods on trust and also to prevent any merchant in the organization from trusting them. The dead beats are to be blacklisted, and then if any merchant sells them any goods on time he is to be fined $20 for each and every offense.
“Dead beats who systematically victimize local retail merchants are to be boycotted.”
This early credit-reporting agency reflects the brutal reality of 'trust' economies before the era of modern credit scores. Today's consumer protections make such overt blacklisting and punitive fines among businesses legally impossible.
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