Talk:Bogage and Sons

Consumer credit 50 or 100 years ago existed on a wide scale but looked a lot different than it does today. Today, credit cards and digital credit instruments (e.g. Apple Pay) are both corporate and anonymous. Consumers don't face their creditors unless they fall behind on their payments. Even then, the collector they face is generally a corporate third party, still anonymous and impersonal. The business of credit in the first half of the 20th century, however, was very personal. When a business offered its customers credit, it often meant that the business hired employees whose job it was to collect weekly payments from those who had "accounts" with the business.

Louis Bogage was a salesman. He was selling pickles in Harlem when he married Annie Dobrin in 1915, and he was peddling curtains door to door in Worcester when he met Rebecca Fishman in 1919. He continued selling, most often door to door, and collecting payments on account in Trenton. His occupation was listed variously as collector (one time, in the business of poultry) and/or salesman. He spent a few years working at Kaplan's in Trenton (a retail business) before taking that model and starting Bogage and Sons in Bristol. The business of Bogage and Sons relied heavily on their customers' credit. They offered "Nationally Advertised Brands," such as Jonathan Logan and Hart Shaffner and Marx, and encouraged buyers to use their credit. In fact, they cited their 2,500 credit accounts in