Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Bulletin of the Department of Labor, Vol. 21: March 1899
The original pawn shop is difficult to locate. Early historians were interested in other lines, and only when the royal crown was placed in pawn or the King took steps to curb the cupidity of the hated money lender was the subject of pawns and pledges mentioned. Moreover, the history of pawnbroking is so interwoven with that of usury and banking that its complete separation from these subjects is, for a time at least, an impossibility. From earliest times and with all peoples the system of pledging effects as security for advances in money has existed in some form. In this early period all those who accepted pledges as security for loans were not pawnbrokers in the sense that we to-day use the term.
Of the antiquity of pawnbroking we are assured, but are without a clue as to what may have been its process of metamorphosis from the time of the Jewish law to that of the Roman. Its analogy to banking, the fact that the pawnbrokers later became bankers, would lead to the conclusion that private pawnbrokers existed long before the State took cognizance of the business. It seems probable that the constant tak ing of articles in pledge, which of necessity demanded their safekeeping to secure the repayment of the loan; suggested the like deposit of money and valuables. In this case the progenitor of the present bank ing system was originally a pawnshop, instead of a bank which later' took up the pawn business.
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