Moline Retail Merchants’ Association
This association, like the Retail Merchants’ Association of Rock Island, affiliates with both the National and State organizations. Like other bodies of its kind its objects are to advance and protect the business interests of its members, to abate trade abuses and illegitimate practices, to secure beneficial legislation, and in various ways produce a feeling of friendliness and co-operation between the varied business interests and the public as a whole. This association was instituted April 1, 1903. It is now incorporated. The first workers in the movement looking to the perfection of this organization were: B. H. Quick, S. S. Hoffman, C. F. Dewend, Martin Carlson, Charles G. Hogberg, C. O. Lovejoy and William Carstens, who, with the help of the above gentlemen, did the first soliciting for membership. Such was their success that inside of ten days one hundred and fifteen business men had signed the charter list. The first regular meeting place was at 422 Sixteenth Street, where permanent head-quarters are now located. ” The success of the Retail Merchants Association has been phenomenal. They have saved thousands of dollars, not alone to the members, but to the public, by protecting the honest people from the dishonest. Further than this twenty per cent the reduction of freight rates in the State of Illinois, which amounts to about $20,000,000 to the people of the State, was brought about mainly by the united efforts of the local and state associations.
Source: Historic Rock Island County, pub. Kramer & Company, Rock Island, Illinois, 1908