CONSUMER CREDIT FILES I / Small Loans

Summary: Primarily documents the work of the League's Consumer Credit Committee from 1964 to 1970, when retired engineer and mathematician George A. Peirce, Susanna Zwemer's brother, served as chair. Document types include correspondence, minutes, testimony, bills, notes, drafts, charts, calculations, newspaper clippings, publications, broadsides and scrapbooks.

Divided into ten subseries: George A. Peirce; General; Banking; Borrower's Handbook; Consumer Credit Protection Act; Retail Installment; Secondary Mortgages; Small Loans; Uniform Consumer Credit Code; and Wage Assignments and Wage Garnishment.

The George A. Peirce subseries includes biographical material, drafts, background materials and copies of his writings, as well as correspondence with members of Congress and New Jersey Legislators and reports to the League. The General subseries includes subjects for which there was too little material for a separate subseries, such as Consumer Education, Debt Collection, First Mortgages and Insurance. The remaining subseries document specific legislative campaigns and projects in which Peirce played a leading role.

Of particular interest is background material and drafts of the Borrower's Handbook (1966-1967), designed by Peirce to be used by consumers in shopping for credit. The Secondary Mortgage subseries documents seven bills (1965-1970) designed to lower the interest rate and give borrowers protection against unreasonable charges and misleading advertising. Small Loans (1964-1967) includes the effort to change small loan law, using the annual percentage rate devised by Peirce and abolishing wage assignment, the deducting by employers of wages in order to pay debts. The Uniform Consumer Credit Code, which was passed in 1978, was opposed by the League because it invalidated New Jersey consumer credit legislation such as the setting of maximum interest rates for loans.

Also documents the campaign for the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act (1968) which included legislation concerning Truth in Lending, Extortionate Credit Transactions and Restrictions on Wage Garnishment, the practice by which the court authorized wage deductions to pay a debt. Regulation Z addressed the compliance of individual states with the Act.