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Concerning Credit Men
by
“Now, Herbert was a straight, steady boy. I recommended him to my house for credit. He didn’t owe a dollar on earth. He bought about five thousand dollars’ worth of goods and was able to discount his bills, right from the jump. Now, what do you suppose one of the commercial agencies said about him? Mind you, he had for four or five years run his uncle’s store. The uncle was sick and left things really in the hands of Herbert. The agency said he was worth not over five hundred dollars and that he was no good for credit.
“I, of course, learned of this through our office and I told Herbert all about it and insisted that he ought to get that thing straightened out. He said, when I spoke to him of it, ‘Why, I did fill out the blanks that they sent in to me–told them the straight of it, exactly what I had, $3,500, and they surely reported it as I gave it to them.’ ‘No, they haven’t done any such thing, Herbert, because I looked into the matter myself when I was last in your office.’
“Well, Herbert had no trouble in getting goods from the houses whose salesmen he knew real well, but he had to suffer the inconvenience of having a great many orders turned down that he placed–either that or else he was written that he would have to pay cash in advance before shipping. It caused him a whole lot of worry. The boy–well, he wasn’t such a boy after all, he was nearly thirty years old and strictly capable–was worried about all this, and I saw it. I told him, ‘Look here, Herbert, you must get this thing straightened up. You write the agencies again and tell them just how you stand and that you want them to give you the proper sort of a report.’
“It wasn’t a great while before the representative of this agency came around. Herbert went at him hammer and tongs for not doing him justice–then what do you think that fellow did? Nothing!
“In spite of all this Herbert paid up all his bills all right and soon established his credit by being able to give references to first-class firms who stated that he paid them promptly. So, he became independent of the agencies altogether and when they asked him for any statement after that, he told them, ‘Go to —-.’ Now, of course, this wasn’t the thing for him to do.
“A merchant should see that the commercial agencies give him a good report because, if he doesn’t, he is simply cutting off his nose to spite his face. If he ever starts to open a new account with some house, the first thing the credit man of that concern will do, when he gets his order, will be to turn to his ‘bibles’ and see how the man is rated. These commercial agencies are going to say something about a man. That’s the way they make their living. If they don’t say something good, they will say something indifferent or positively bad. So, what’s the merchant to do but truckle to them and take chances on their telling the truth about him?”
“Yes, you’re right,” chimed in the drygoods man, “but even then, try as hard as he will, the merchant can’t get justice, sometimes. One of my customers, who is one of the most systematic business men I know of, for years and years had no report. Half the goods he bought was turned down simply because the agent in his town for the commercial agency was a shyster lawyer who had it in for him. And he had all he could do to retain his credit. Just to show you how good the man was in the opinion of those with whom he did business, let me say that right after he had had a big fire and had suffered a big loss, one firm wired him: ‘Your credit is good with us for any amount. Buy what you will, pay when you can.’