Since the 1890s, people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder in the U.S. have paid the highest price for credit. Anne Fleming tells how each generation ha

Debt was an inescapable fact of life in early America. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, its sinfulness was preached by ministers and the right to imp

The story of personal debt in modern America Before the twentieth century, personal debt resided on the fringes of the American economy, the province of small-t

The Federal Trade Commission receives more complaints about rogue debt collecting than about any activity besides identity theft. Dramatically and entertainingl

This dissertation explores the growth and regulation of small-sum lending to the poor in the United States, from the Progressive Era through the War on Poverty