‘The poor man’s overdraft’: a longer history of Australian retail credit

Abstract

Most histories of Australian cultural life pin the start of consumer credit’s popularity to the 1950s and the heady days of the early long boom. This article reveals the longer history of consumer credit in Australia. Middle-class Australians have long made use of forms of credit provided by retailers such as monthly accounts to supplement their incomes, take advantage of special offers, deal with unexpected expenses, or indulge impulsive desires. Those with more limited and less regular incomes, working-class families unable to secure credit from banks or department stores, also became enmeshed in credit culture, but through a different route. An early form of retail credit – the cash-order system – played a crucial role in preparing working-class consumers for the postwar boom in credit culture. Emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century, the cash-order system provided a bridge between older forms of working-class retail credit such as the tick and the slate, and modern forms such as the department store budget accounts that would become widely available after the Second World War.