What Lies Ahead in the Field of Small Loans

Abstract

The amazing growth of consumer credit is one of the outstanding economic facts of our times just as the Uniform Small Loan Law, prepared by the Russell Sage Foundation, has proved to be one of the most successful pieces of remedial legislation enacted in our generation. This effort to take a look, even a partial look, into the future is necessarily based upon a thoughtful consideration of the past. But, as H. G. Wells once observed, if a student knew all the past facts he could, in some fields, foretell the future with fair accuracy. I do not know all the facts. I believe nobody does because the subject is too vast and complex. Consumer credit, and particularly the small loans field, deals with people and no one mind can grasp all their motivations-their plans, ambitions, hopes, and fears. My own knowledge is strictly limited; but it does extend over nearly forty years. Those of us who can go back that far have this advantage. We have seen what consumer credit was when banks frowned on such loans, when there were no licensed small loan companies, when the whole field was the exclusive domain of the loan shark with his usurious rates of interest and his harsh collection methods that