SALARY LOANS IN CINCINNATI
The business of lending money on salaries and wages has received a practical knockout blow in Cincinnati through the Commercial Tribune, which instituted the crusade, with the co-operation of the officials of the city and of various private organizations.
Aided by an ordinance which orders the licensing of salary loan offices and which makes a weekly report to the city auditor necessary, the campaigners have already been able to put one office out of business entirely, and to sew up all the others in the courts in such a way that it now seems very likely that most of these will retire rather than face the storm which awaits them.
D. H. Tolman is more deeply involved in Cincinnati than he has ever been before. His son, E. E. Tolman, who is said to be connected with the business of his father, is under arrest and is now waiting a hearing in the police court. His manager has been arrested and convicted on three counts.
Although these cases have been appealed to a higher court, an application for an order to restrain the further interference with the Tolman business has thus far been refused.
D. H. Tolman has ordered his manager in Cincinnati to refuse to comply with the ordinance and unless the courts do issue this order the manager will be arrested every week.
The Commercial Tribune has secured all of the Tolman forms from a former manager. These have all been printed together with a letter from the ex-manager in which the latter makes a complete exposé of the methods pursued behind the doors of one of his offices.
The auditor of Cincinnati has declared his purpose of keeping up the fight. He has forced ten salary loan offices to pay a license fee and to comply with the provisions of the local ordinance. Agents have been permanently employed by the official to watch the loan offices and to ferret out any new agents who may attempt to operate secretly.
The Legal Aid Society which was recently formed to advise the poor, has made it its business to impress upon all who seek its meetings the futility of borrowing money from the salary loan people and has furnished a list of the companies which are classified as "loan sharks," to every man and woman whom it could reach.
In this way people who never read the newspapers are given information which they otherwise would probably never receive.
The Legal Aid Society is also at work on a code of laws which will be submitted to the General Assembly at its coming session and which it is hoped will solve the question of loaning money on salaries and chattels in Ohio for all time.
The attorneys of the society promise a law which will set a fixed rate, which will include interest and expenses, on all such loans. It is said now that this rate will be either three or four per cent. The contemplated law will also contain a provision which will make the recovery of usury possible.
It is further planned to have a provision in the law similar to the Massachusetts statute, requiring the signatures of the wife, when a borrower is married, and of his employer. Some of the best attorneys in Cincinnati including former Prosecuting Attorney Benton Oppenheimer, are at work on these laws.
Another movement now on foot is the founding of a salary loan office on the same basis as several chattel loan offices which are now operating in the country, whose stockholders are philanthropists and men of wealth.
Cincinnati has such a chattel loan company and the men who are now fighting the salary loan business there are urging the stockholders of this company to take up the other work.
The most gratifying thing of the Cincinnati campaign has been the falling off of business in the loan offices. The companies admit this and one broker left for Florida after explaining that his business had decreased seventy-five per cent during the campaign.