Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1878-12-20
Interest on Past Due Accounts.

Greeles, Burnham & Co.'S Grocers' Price Cur
rent.
In common with all other merchants,
we occasionally receive requests from
customers to allow their accounts to
run past due, with the understanding
that they will pay interest at ten per
cent per annum, from maturity, and we
sometimes, in the case of regular and
responsible customers, extend such cour-
tesies, and give an extension. closing
the account by note, and adding inter
est. This is not, and should not be- a
matter of frequent occurrence. The
wholesale merchant should not be called
upon to furnish the capital for his own
business and for his customers business
in addition. He has a right to expect
that the bills due him will be paid
promptly at maturity. He buys goods
and contracts debts, relying upon his
collections to pay them, and believing
that the contracts which his customers
have entered into with him-that they
will pay him certain sums at certain
dates-will be faithfully carried out,
and that he will thus be enabled to meet
his own contracts. Every failure on the
part of his customer to pay bills when
due detracts just that much from his
has made. We sincerely hope that the
day is coming when the country mer-
chant will feel as keenly the necessity
of paying his bills promptly on the day
of maturity as the wholesale merchant
in the city now appreciates the necessi-
ty of paying his note when due In the
latter case, the city wholesaler knows
that to let his note go to protest, or
even to let a matured open account re-
main unpaid, means loss Of credit and
financial ruin; and we believe the day is
rapidly approaching, when the prompt
paying country merchant, who never
fails to meet his bills when due, will
have such an advantage over his com
petitor who pays "after harvest" or
when he kills his hogs" that the latter
will be compelled to abandon mercantile
pursuits and give his undivided atten-
ton to harvesting, hog killing, and other
avocations for which he is better fitted
Then we shall have class of merchants
who understand and appreciate the
value of mercantile credit and pro1pt-
ness, and whose promises to pay at a
certain time have some value and can
be relied upon. This class can always
buy goods cheaper than the old fogy
pay when convenient" class can, they
will do business on smaller expenses,
they are more enterprising, and the re-
suit will finally be, that they will push
the others out of business and take
their places. This in the spirit of the
age. and nothing can change or avert it.
But some of your readers will say,
what can we do? our customers do not
pay us, and so ,ce cannot pay. Then our
answer is, there is something radically
wrong in the way your business is con
Quoted. Either you have capital INSULT
cient for your business, or you are car
rying too large stock of goods, or you
don't collect as closely as you ought to,
or you are selling on too long time.
And this brings us to the subject on
which we started, but from which we
have wandered, which is this: That no
merchant. either wholesdler or retailer,
can afford to sell goods on unusually
long time, eren achen he gets high rate
of interest. 1t is very natural when a
customer offers to give you his note at
three, six or twelve months, with inter-
est at one per cent. a month, to think
that that is very fair rate Of interest,
much more than money usually brings,
and that it will certainly pay you to
take the note at such a rate, when
banks and capitalists are glad to get
good paper at seven or eight per cent.
SO also some Of our customers seem to
think. Most of them, we are glad to say
in the cases where we allow them extra
time, regard it as favor, and appreci-
ate it accordingly, but some seem to
think that the accommodation is on the
other side, and that they have done a
very handsome thing by us in paying us
ten per cent, when money can be Dor.
rowed at eight per cent. We have fire.
quently been reminded by such that