Collaborative Research: Uniform Small Loan Laws and Credit for Poor Americans in the Early 20th-Century

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

The objective of this project is to conduct the first in-depth study of the creation and passage of the Uniform Small Loan Law (USLL), an effort spearheaded by the newly established Russell Sage Foundation to regulate credit for poor people in the United States during the first decades of the twentieth century. The hope was to push exploitative and unethical lenders ("loan sharks") out of credit markets, replace them with legitimate lenders, and thereby benefit poor people as debtors. The Foundation's efforts dovetailed with the uniform law movement, but represented a hybrid strategy that used market-regulatory law to produce social welfare outcomes. The research methodology is two-pronged, combining an extensive archival analysis of the inner workings of the Foundation and its political lobbying efforts with a quantitative analysis of passage of the USLL at the state level over the period from 1906 to 1939. The latter will make use of existing data sets, supplemented by additional data gathered by the researchers.