In the late seventeenth century, coffeehouses spread rapidly through London, and contemporaries argued about what they were for. Critics complained that they lured men away from work and family into idle talk. Defenders replied that the coffeehouse served a genuine public function: for the price of a single cup, a merchant, a scholar, and a tradesman could sit at the same table and exchange news. Unlike taverns, coffeehouses discouraged drunkenness, and unlike private clubs, they admitted anyone who could pay the modest charge. Newspapers were read aloud and debated; commercial notices were posted; and shipping information passed so reliably through certain houses that they evolved into early centers of insurance and trade. Whatever the moralists feared, the coffeehouse had become a place where information circulated across social ranks.