Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty Inc.

Allan Jones wasn't looking to kick-start an industry when he flew his single-engine Piper Saratoga from his home in Cleveland, Tenn., to Johnson City in the spring of 1993. He only wanted to persuade a man to come work for him. Jones took over his father's small collection agency when he was in his early twenties and built it into a multicity behemoth—"the largest in Tennessee," he'd tell you. But it gnawed at him that nearly two decades later he had no presence in the northeast corner of the state. So when he heard that James Eaton, an old friend of his father's, had been let go after years in the business, Jones jumped into his plane to go get his man.

Eaton was stately, a 56-year-old who wore glasses and smoked a pipe. "He looked to me kind of like Sherlock Holmes," Jones recalls. That made it all the sadder when Jones found Eaton working out of an office in a dilapidated gas station. There, in a shack with paint peeling off the walls, Eaton had set up a meager-looking business called Check Cashing Inc. "I guess I've found myself my man in northeast Tennessee," Jones told himself.