From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 4, 1990:

Local credit experts reported this week that incidences of bad checks being written in Douglas County were increasing, becoming a burden to merchants and consumers alike. “I’ll guess there’s 450 bad checks (written) a day in Douglas County,” said Arnold Feinberg, general manager of the Credit Bureau of Lawrence Inc. “We’ve accumulated 23,000 bad checks in the last four years.” Feinberg attributed the rise in bad checks to what he called a “new form of consumer financing.” “When people can’t get a credit card they say, ‘Well, I’ll just write a check and pay the service charge later.’ But writing a bad check is really a pretty serious thing, as far as your credibility and your credit goes,” he explained. “Abusing those privileges over and over again automatically puts you onto our verification data base, and the merchants will refuse to take your check.” Feinberg added that an increase in forgeries and checks written intentionally on closed accounts had contributed to the growing problem.