Born Losers
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Scott A. Sandage - Born Losers A History of Failure in America (2006) - libgen.lc
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- Old Evils and New Goods
- The Truth about John Beardsley
Information Please “Please call at my office and receive important information. lewis tappan.” A printed form with handwritten names, an “Agency Ticket of Invitation” summoned those who previously had Misinformation and Its Discontents 161 checked on a man or firm now in trouble. A client explained, “there were two forms, one for ordinary information and the other extraordinary.” The more routine form said “call at my office at your leisure, if interested.” Either ticket admitted the bearer to a marvelous exhibition. The reporting room resembled a post office or train ticket depot. A dozen or more clerks manned a battery of tall desks, like teller windows, ledgers visible in the stacks behind. Inking in a call slip, a visitor “handed up a ticket of inquiry” to the clerk’s “raised desk.” A page boy fetched the cor- rect volume, which thumped on the desk impressively, like a fam- ily Bible. The subscriber could judge this book only by its cover, as it was “laid at an angle of about 40 or 45 degrees, so that a per- son outside the desk, cannot see the inside of the book without difficulty.” The clerk made no copies of the report; he read the en- try aloud and permitted the hearer to take notes. House rules were strict, but the intelligence seemed to be worth the inconve- nience. In 1851, a satisfied client wrote in the New-York Times, “for every dollar I pay for information, I save one hundred.” 6 “Information” was a fresh word back then, in the sense of au- thoritative knowledge that could be stockpiled and sold like any other commodity. Often associated with the computer industry after World War II, an information system was already emerging a century earlier, when Lewis Tappan set about “procuring, by resident and special agents, information . . . for the benefit of such merchants in this city as approve the object and become subscrib- ers.” So said an 1843 advertisement, but Tappan revealed his vision more fully in a private letter that same year. “In prosperous times,” he boasted, clients “will feel able to pay for the information, and in bad times they feel they must have it.” If Tappan reveled in his own advantage, he also foresaw the growth potential of this new industry. Subscribers and subjects might rise and fall, but the in- formation broker could not lose. 7 Tappan’s early rivals tried to best him (rhetorically if not opera- tionally) with offers emphasizing “full information.” A rival’s agent recruited in 1845 agreed to send “the required information” 162 Misinformation and Its Discontents and promised, “I shall endeavor to give correct information.” Such modifiers conveyed the value added to narratives made and disseminated systematically. J. M. Bradstreet’s Improved Com- mercial Agency earned its name by enhanced delivery. He printed rating books for his clients to use anywhere, when his forerunner still required office visits for “obtaining the necessary informa- tion.” Like a yardstick or an interest table, knowledge formatted for useful reference became a vital business tool. Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine hailed a new “Basis of Prosperity” in 1860, “the vast modern increase of the facilities for diffusing and obtaining full and correct information on everything pertaining to trade.” Bankers and insurers collected and analyzed data, but only credit agents sold nothing else. Something new unfolded from local news compiled, evaluated, indexed, updated, and retailed nation- wide. Tappan’s quaint motto, “Man’s Confidence in Man,” evolved into a modern mania for “full and correct information.” 8 Information systems and bureaucratic surveillance seemed to exemplify the process of economic rationalization. Theorists from Adam Smith to Joseph Schumpeter explained how capitalism matured as policies and methods superseded personal relations and community mores in doing business. Max Weber studied ra- tionalization as bureaucracy—“written documents (‘the files’) . . . preserved in their original or draft form” by “a staff of subaltern officials and scribes of all sorts.” Weber saw bureaucracy as “a power instrument of the first order,” and his droll aside “(‘the files’)” bespoke the authority vested in carefully controlled in- formation. At the Mercantile Agency, “the files” expanded to 2,580 volumes in fifty years. However rational they were, credit reports were never impersonal. Tappan meant to enforce moral discipline (“it checks knavery”), using new systems to fortify old values. “It tends to promote a high standard of mercantile honor,” applauded Banker’s Magazine; critics said the agency imposed “moral quarantine.” Either way, moral regulation and economic rationalization coalesced. Far from trading morality for policy, credit reports projected the rules of face-to-face bargains onto Misinformation and Its Discontents 163 richer, long-distance markets. Moral prescription and commercial description fraternized on every page. 9 Failure and success were the information industry’s first prod- ucts; it arose to clarify such categories by converting achievement and identity into “necessary information.” Credit reports began as local knowledge—rumors, meetings, sightings—bits of oral cul- ture to be transformed into systematic writing. Stories gained au- thority and value as “the files.” The “three C’s” of character, capi- tal, and capacity merged into taxonomies like “A number 1” and “second-rate,” judgment calls that sounded commonsensical. Un- heard-of capacity and efficiency bred resistance to challenge, as a generation of scriveners came of age, mad for record-keeping and truth telling. Demanding a correction, Billings and dozens like him chased a new type of wild goose into the courtroom. The first suit against the Mercantile Agency, brought by a “country merchant” named John Beardsley, was a public spectacle complete with salacious testimony, surprise witnesses, conspiracy theories —even a prisoner of conscience. A question loomed: what if ef- ficient corps of clerks and agents had the power to make their predictions come true? 10 Old Evils and New Goods John Beardsley just missed the trial of the century, back in Sep- tember 1807. Born six days after the verdict, he grew up ambitious and left rural Goshen for Gotham, sixty miles east. The country boy in New York City soon fell under evil influences—becoming a law clerk for Aaron Burr, slayer of Hamilton and accused plotter of treason. Acquitted the week of John’s birth yet guilty in public opinion, the former Vice President had fled to Europe in 1808, only to return later to practice law in Manhattan. Ostracized, Burr minded his own affairs and hired the usual crew of student clerks. By the 1820s, the name Aaron Burr may have meant noth- ing but opportunity to a young man like John, whose surname probably opened the old man’s door. Burrs and Beardsleys had 164 Misinformation and Its Discontents founded Fairfield County, Connecticut, intermarrying and going to war together. Aaron Burr had been an aide-de-camp at the battle of Long Island in 1776, where John’s grandfather had been a regimental surgeon; and the surgeon’s brother wintered with Burr at Valley Forge in 1777. But if old family ties launched John’s ca- reer in the 1820s, a reviled mentor opened few doors. Success eluded Beardsley in New York, but not love; he wed Mary Rutherford in 1828. Indirectly, she would entangle him in their own trial of the century twenty years later, when ambition and scandal tainted his good name. 11 The case of Beardsley v. Tappan ran from 1848 to 1871. Set off by a rumor in a frontier village, it was settled by a ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue were entries about John and his brother, storekeepers in Norwalk, Ohio. “July [18]48, Has been sued. [R]eport says that ‘J[ohn] B.’s wife is about to file a bill for di- vorce & Alimony & that he has put his p[ro]p[er]ty out of his hands,” the informant warned; “if so their store will probably be closed at once.” The agency was an early warning system; word soon got back to Norwalk. Scrambling for cash, the Beardsleys advertised a clearance sale, “in consequence of certain wicked, false, and slanderous reports which have been industriously circu- lated in New York against them.” John protested to the agency and filed suit when Tappan stood by his information. Neither side blinked for two decades, as the case weighed “a valuable aid to our merchants” against “the evils incidental to it.” For John Beardsley, both his business and his manhood were in doubt. For the Mer- cantile Agency, “the most serious crisis in its brief history” tested its accuracy and also its legality. For Mary Beardsley, the proceed- ings questioned her autonomy and even her sanity. For the local informant, his integrity and anonymity were at risk. And for the public, new ventures like “industriously circulated” information collided with new values like the right to privacy. Beardsley v. Tappan argued about surveillance as a business method and a daily presence: the new arbiter of individual success or failure. 12 John Beardsley chased success down any road that would go Misinformation and Its Discontents 165 ahead. After New York, he took Mary to Lanesborough, Massa- chusetts. In the spring of 1832 they joined Connecticut settlers in Norwalk, Ohio, sixty miles west of Cleveland. They opened a millinery, but in November it went up in a “dreadful con- flagration” that consumed half the town. John boldly put more irons in the fire; in 1835 alone, he formed partnerships with a law- yer and a saddler while managing a livery stable and seeking pub- lic office. A Whig, he stood for Huron County recorder and in 1844 he ran for county prosecutor, losing twice yet building a name. He also dealt in real estate, lost some to back taxes, and speculated in silkworms. In 1845, his brother, Horace, came west and they opened H. Beardsley & Co. on Main Street. “New Goods–New Goods!!” they advertised in the weekly Reflector; “Staple and Fancy Dry Goods, Groceries, Hardware, Crockery, Hats, Caps, Boots and Shoes.” Fashions “direct from New York” 166 Misinformation and Its Discontents Several African-American men are among those gathered on Norwalk’s Main Street, beneath the awning of “Beardsley & Bro. Dry Goods Head-Quarters.” The man in the white smock may be John Beardsley, who became sole proprietor when Horace retired in 1865. (Courtesy of Henry R. Timman, Firelands Historical Society.) [To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.] included “Leghorn Bonnets” and “Calicoes, of every description and style.” John’s legal, political, and commercial ventures estab- lished himself and an extended family, including his father and Mary’s siblings and in-laws. On Main Street near the store, their homes were known for gardens tended by Horace’s wife, Eliza- beth, whose green thumb and lavender ribbons lingered long in local memory. Befitting their station, the brothers rented pews at St. Paul’s Episcopal, where Lizzie chaired the Church Aid Soci- ety. By any standard, this family had succeeded. 13 The Mercantile Agency picked up their trail with the store opening and watched until John retired thirty-three years later, in 1878. The initial entry, dated September 1845, flashed back a dozen years to his arrival in Norwalk “poor.” In his first ten years there, lawyering and “fortunate speculations” had earned him a farm, a lot and house in town, and now a store. The first biannual update came in February 1846. “Com[men]c[e]d last fall. ‘H[orace]’ is recently from N.Y. city, he appears well, ag[e]d ab[ou]t 28,” it stated. “‘J[ohn]’ ag[e]d abt. 38, marr[ie]d, is a lawyer, his reputa- tion for honesty & integrity is not first rate. [H]e is ambitious & attends strictly to the bus[iness] of the store, is w[orth] [$5,000].” Although John had not paid debts promptly in the past, “the firm appears to be d[oin]g a g[oo]d bus[iness]. safe for the present.” Further updates found the brothers prosperous and audacious, stocking goods worth up to $23,000. “It is hardly possible to sell that amount here,” the correspondent scoffed in 1848. Despite hard times, a year later the writer had to admit that “they appear to have sold off their goods rapidly considering the scarcity of money.” Up against more doubtful reports later, the brothers “put forth very strenuous efforts and are apparently doing well.” Com- plementary temperaments made them an effective team—Horace the cajoling salesman, John the calculating businessman. 14 In the summer of 1848, however, doubts arose that could not be quelled. The Norwalk informant wrote in July that divorce would likely ruin the store. Tickets of Invitation went out in Manhattan, but some recipients doubted the warning of failure and fraud. Misinformation and Its Discontents 167 “I think you are doing this man or this firm an injustice,” one job- ber told agency manager Benjamin Douglass, adding that he got $500 that very day from Beardsley & Co., who had also remitted $2,000 to other houses. A Norwalker in New York on business, Charles L. Boalt, was escorted to the agency by a subscriber. “The report must have come from some malicious source,” Boalt said. Douglass refused to pull the report, but promised to inform Tappan and solicit confirmation. Meanwhile, Boalt reassured the brothers’ creditors, but some took legal action anyway. In August, an emphatic reply came from Norwalk: “(Confirms prev[ious] rept. & says in addition) Two suits in com[mon] pleas Court, be- sides those commenced by ‘Judge Baker.’ ‘Mrs. B.’ petition for a divorce will soon be filed & I am informed ‘J[ohn] B.’ is putting his R[eal] E[state] out of his hands. I do not doubt but the firm has the ability to do a prosperous bus[iness] so long as they are honest which I think will be just as long as it suits their inten- tions.” More tickets went out, heeded this time, and the system worked as it was meant to. “I declined selling [to] Mr. Beardsley after I got this report from Mr. Tappan,” a New York merchant said later. 15 Damned and double-damned, John Beardsley journeyed home to New York to redeem himself. On 18 November 1848, he visited the agency behind Wall Street, bringing a tea trader who had re- fused his orders because of the reports. They found Tappan him- self in the reporting hall, a hive of clerks and clients at tall desks, abuzz with questions and answers on a busy Saturday. According to the trader, “Mr. Beardsley told him that he called for the pur- pose of asking him to correct his report of him, that [it] was do- ing him great injury in his business and wronging him—that it was a slander; Mr. Tappan said he ‘would show him before he got through that it was no slander.’” With twenty clerks in earshot, he told the tea trader to leave and took Beardsley into his private office. Tappan refused to kill the report or to name the reporter. Beardsley had come of age playing the games of New York law- 168 Misinformation and Its Discontents yers, but if he hoped his adversary would flinch at litigious talk of “slander,” he was wrong. If Tappan thought Beardsley was bluffing, he was wrong. They had nothing left to say but See you in court. Tappan’s office door had been closed barely five minutes. 16 The Truth about John Beardsley Opening the trial proceedings took three years. Lewis Tappan sold out to his brother Arthur and Benjamin Douglass in 1849, but his diary of 1851 found him “daily in the Circuit Court of the U.S., attending the trial of H. Beardslee & Co’s suit against me for Libel, growing out of words recorded July & Aug. 1848 on the Books of my Mercantile Agency.” Retired but still “defendant in law,” he drew a caret next to “& Co” and inserted “( John Beardsley)”—plaintiff in fact. The store was in Horace’s name, but it was John who literally made a federal case of it all. Tappan noted big names: “B. F. Butler & Ch. O’Connor are counsel for defendant, & Mess. Cutting & Hoffman for the plaintiff.” F. B. Cutting was a noted lawyer-politico and Ogden Hoffman a former U.S. District Attorney and future New York Attorney General. They faced former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin F. Butler and Charles O’Conor (his spelling). Widely regarded as America’s finest lawyer, O’Conor broke Boss Tweed, defended Jefferson Davis, and became the first Catholic to run for presi- dent. His Honor Samuel R. Betts presided, a federal judge so in- timidating that he sat for twenty years before any higher court overruled him. The Tappan case would go to a jury and be sec- ond-guessed by the newspapers. 17 Betts called for opening arguments on 22 November 1851, in the U.S. Circuit Court chamber at New York City Hall. Butler and O’Conor claimed the agency’s reports were not public defamation but rather “privileged communications” (as between lawyer and client), immune from prosecution even if derisive or false. This Misinformation and Its Discontents 169 doctrine was not upheld until 1882, but the gambit revealed that “doubt [of ] the general legality or usefulness of the business” was seen as more of a threat than John Beardsley. Regarding Beardsley, Tappan’s lawyers entered “a plea of justification,” or truth defense. He had no case if “the said libellous [sic] words . . . were, at the time of the composing and publishing thereof, in all respects true.” The defense ordered depositions from Ohio to prove a failed marriage and a failing business. This testimony showed that folks gossiped about the family, but was otherwise useless. Indeed, the plaintiff introduced several of the defense’s own depositions to show that reported lawsuits against Beardsley were retaliatory actions for liens he placed. Vague testimony about the timing of local gossip fit Beardsley’s claim that the sto- ries began when townsmen “hear[d] that reports had been circu- lated in New York.” Had a correspondent’s insinuation come back home as information? Cutting and Hoffman forced the defense to object to its own witnesses. Eventually, it emerged that the re- ports were not true—not exactly; but the truth hardly mattered in the larger battle over making and selling truth. 18 Plaintiff ’s Exhibit A, by subpoena, was “a certain folio manu- script book, marked on the back, ‘Record,’ and on the side, ‘Ohio,’ ‘A to H.’” Behold, the big red book! Laid open, it was the size of the New-York Daily Times (founded two months earlier) and nearly as gray with fine print, albeit handwritten. The dramatic bulk of the thing (600 pages in crimson covers) fit diverse scenar- ios. Cutting and Hoffman waved it like a bloody club, evidence of character assassination. Butler and O’Conor made a fuss about clipping envelopes on the disputed page—to frame the Beardsley reports but maintain confidentiality of the adjacent ones. On the witness stand, subscribers got their first peek at the disputed en- tries, noses having almost to graze the page to focus on the tiny script. “I should think that was about the substance of the re- port read to me,” several nodded, but some detected omissions. “I don’t see the words ‘Mr. Beardsley was not a man of good char- 170 Misinformation and Its Discontents acter,’ here in this book,” defense witness Samuel Frink swore un- der cross-examination; “I recollect distinctly that those were the words used to me and not my own inference; ‘not an honest man’ were the precise words used.” 19 Besides individual inference or bias, the trial revealed that rou- tine factors could skew “the words used.” Clerks might color readings in word or tone. Clients might ask questions that prompted clerks to editorialize. Urgent news might not wait for transcribing. New Yorker Thomas Lawrence, Jr., conceded on de- fense cross that “the information may not have been read from the book; it may have been read from a letter.” By policy, the cor- respondent’s missive would have been destroyed once copied; but copying could change wording. Tucked here and there in many volumes, original letters survive for comparison to page entries, showing that clerks did not always copy verbatim. Such variables might explain why Charles Boalt (the Norwalker who confronted Douglass) heard different words when he visited Tappan three days later. “I also recollect the language, ‘They will probably fail,’ as a part of the report read the second time,” Boalt said. Con- flicting testimony showed how everyday contingencies revised even “important information.” 20 Otherwise, how could words vanish from a page? According to Boalt, Tappan said that regular correspondents were not his only sources, and that news from others was copied in pencil, not ink. For whatever reason, many penciled remarks can in fact be seen on the books, as in P. T. Barnum’s entry and that of an absconder from Bangor. “I got the impression . . . that [Tappan] wished me to understand,” Boalt added, “that some parts of the report that bore the hardest on Messrs. Beardsleys’ credit was in pencil.” Strange, given the red ink and blue notes illustrating another in- novative agency practice: color-coding. So, why pencil? The firm did erase reports about Horace Billings and Abraham Lincoln. Penciled notes in the Beardsley entry include one from Benja- min Douglass: “Let no person attempt to read this rep[or]t off Misinformation and Its Discontents 171 [without] consulting B. D. (under penalty).” Beside this com- mand, “(how much?)” was added by a cheeky clerk, perhaps the same fellow who pulled extra duty because of the lawsuit. 21 His chore was to recopy a full page of the disputed entries, and he left traces of his work. A single hand and pen wrote all the en- tries from 1845 to 1850, which would have been unlikely had re- ports been entered as they came in. The copyist misdated entries, writing 1858 instead of 1848. Updates on later pages carried a headnote, “For prev[ious] rep[or]ts See p. 359,” but page 359 is missing. Extant records begin at 316, on different paper from ad- jacent pages. Such clues narrow the recopying time frame be- tween May 1850 and July 1852, contemporary to the 1851 trial. Re- copying did not prove tampering; deceivers, one assumes, would take more care, and a few omitted phrases would hardly have won the case. Perhaps the original page was simply damaged by overhandling during the trial or retained by defense lawyers after- ward. Besides, the suit went on for twenty years, and nobody seemed even to notice the recopying, much less to cry foul. 22 Yet Beardsley v. Tappan disputed not only “words . . . on the books,” but the power of words when investigators became story- tellers, the authority of words when agencies rated identities. Boalt and Frink testified that key phrases stuck in their heads, markers of identity and adversity: “not a man of good character”; “will probably fail.” Defense lawyers moved for dismissal on a technicality: “a fatal variance between the words of said alleged li- bels” in the lawsuit and “in said Record-book.” Judge Betts re- fused to dismiss over quibbles such as “Wife is about to apply for divorce” versus “Wife is abt to file a Bill for divorce.” Even de- fense briefs quoted the Beardsley reports inaccurately or inconsis- tently. No keener record-keeping system had ever existed than “this business of collecting and collating information.” Yet neither side produced a consistent or authoritative text. Words on the books might never fade—but they always changed. 23 This truth undercut the agency’s truths. “We presume the pro- prietors do not pretend to infallibility,” Hunt’s wrote in 1851, “but 172 Misinformation and Its Discontents we are satisfied that the records of the office are rarely inaccurate, and never seriously so . . . for they deal in facts, and not in opin- ions.” But they actually dealt in a commodity made of more than ink and facts. Whether or not “fixed facts” stayed that way, infor- mation moved—from rumors heard on town squares, to reports etched in big books, to recitations and reinterpretations at tall desks, back to rumors on city sidewalks and town squares again. Each entry synthesized oral and scriptural, communal and insti- tutional texts. An accountability system that found uses for pen- cils and unnamed sources sounded unaccountable. Formal and in- formal communications enlarged the net of information—and perhaps the margin of error. Hunt’s presumed wrong: agents did “pretend to infallibility.” The manager in the Billings case “was not in the habit of altering his reports.” To a client who challenged the Beardsley entry, Benjamin Douglass allegedly snapped, “What the report states is undoubtedly true, and I don’t think it necessary to enquire of any one.” Despite lofty claims about the integrity of information, the agency did alter its books, inadvertently and willfully. Written error and erasure were occa- sional; oral exaggeration and elision, constant. 24 Star witness Benjamin Douglass upheld his information under oath but refused to name the source—or even to confirm that he had one in Norwalk. Stating that “his answer . . . would tend to accuse or incriminate him,” Douglass took the Fifth Amend- ment, yet asserted that conscience, not crime, silenced him. Or- dered to answer, he told Judge Betts, “I gave, a solemn pledge, un- der no circumstances, to disclose the names of the agents . . . but to keep them an inviolable secret within my own breast.” He would never tell, even if the court threatened “to deprive me of my life.” Judge Betts gave him twenty days in the Eldridge Street Jail for contempt. “The Imprisoned Witness” ran the agency from his cell via messenger boys, rather than give up the name to re- claim his liberty. Editor Horace Greeley led well-wishers at his release, urging the martyr to run for mayor! Tappan announced that Douglass stood mute as a point of honor, not to carry out a Misinformation and Its Discontents 173 gag order. Twenty-seven clerks signed a testimonial to their boss’s “manly stand” against “a violation of the rights of man.” In ornate script, they defined the principle at stake: “We cannot suppose that the law recognizes a right to coerce an individual into a pub- lic exposure of his private business.” 25 Download 1.6 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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