Huntsville gazette., 1886-08-14
CHATTEL MORTGAGE.
How It Has Become One Of Our
Institutions.
E'j'tIt1 j-------- Ill
Over $4,000 Mortgages Recorded in Chi
cago in Six Months-Good Times
Favorable to Money LENDERS
~ Buying Furniture on
Installments.

Dy AAcChoiolO UCSiCoS tuc Cudtbcl
mortgage, has established. itself as an
institution and has come to be looked
on with some degree of complacency if
not confidence. The startling announc-
ment in recent issue of Bradstreefs
that chattel mortgages had doubled in
Chicago during the last six weeks, led a
reporter to investigate for himself
''whether these things were So" and to
consider whether the causes assigned hv
the commercial authority quoted were
to be received as the true solution of
the problem, or whether explanation
was to be looked for deeper beneath the
surface. Brddstreets claims that the
poverty resulting from the recent strikes,
lockouts, and labor troubles is mainly
accountable for the increase seems at
first thought to be so obviously reason
able and satisfactory, that to look for
other causes of any thing like equal i'm
portance might fairly be considered
presumptuous. and vain; but a searching
ANALYSIS Of the evidence furnished by
the chattel mortgage indexes and from
books in the recorders office, backed
by the testimony of business experts,
goes to show that other subtler and less
obvious factors have played no incon-
siderable part in swelling up the mort
gage legions. An examination of the
chattle mortgage indexes showed that
IL, 164 chattel mortgages were recorded
during the first six months of 1885,
while the number recorded during the
same period of 1886 had increased to
15, 1863. Is this increase of twenty-five
per cent. to be accounted for almost
entirely by the poverty arising from the
labor troubles, with some slight allow
ance for the increase of the population
thrown in?
''No," answered shrewd and ex-
perienced chattelmortgage man. "that's
no satisfactory explanation. We make
more and better loans in good times
than in bad. In fact, in bad times
there's not nearly so much demand for
borrowing money, because we're very
chary about lending money then at all.
It's the unprecedented increase in the
number of men going into the furniture
installment-plan business that's piling
up the mortgages. For one man that
was in that business about two years
ago. there are four or five in
it now, and multitudes of people
who two or three years ago
would have spurned the idea of
buying furniture on time now take quite
kindly to the arrangement. Take my
word for it, the big increase in chattel
mortgages this year is infinitely more
Al IL IL nf ha
time system than the hard times that
we're passing through. One reason
why so many are going into the basi-
ness is that no license is required, as in
the case of pawnbroker, and between
Y YOU and me we're drawing off lot Of
the business from these latter. Why,
bless you. you've no conception OF the
number of men that come to me for
loans on their gold watches and dla-
monds, instead of going to their uncle.
They've more confidence that l won't
do any of the sweating work that their
suncle' is so well up to. Sweating?
Why, don YOU catch onP That means
taking $40 or $50 out of gold watch
by substituting an inferior movement,
or extracting that amount of gold out
of the case in some mysterioussw un-
known to me. The same with dia-
monds. they'll collar your brilliant
and return you your ring with faulty
stone, and that makes it almost value
lessssAs t#s ySEsEsSgH
Another point to be considered in
your calculations, said the now chatty
chattel-mortgage man, lis that five
mortgages are now being recorded Tor
one about couple Of years ago
Money-loaners have at last tumbled to
the fact that their only protection from
knavery lies in the recording OF every
mortgage. however small. Men in the
business who never used to think of re-
cording 2 mortgage for less than $500
now record every thing from 80 up.
This practice is largely the growth Of
the last year. and the reason for It u =
very plain, suppose you take sseV