Library Collections: Document: Full Text
 |
Just Old Shoes
IntroductionA large part of Goodwill Industries’ success in creating sheltered workshops lay in its brilliant marketing. The founder of Goodwill Industries, Edgar James Helms, created a simple scheme: the wealthy would donate unwanted (and often broken) items that the poor could be paid to repair. The repaired items would be sold at a store for minimal cost. Helms believed that charity encouraged dependency and immorality, but this system prevented people from getting something for nothing. In addition, workers would learn skills that would enable them to return to the mainstream labor market. In reality, many workers with disabilities remained at Goodwill Industries and never transitioned out to the mainstream labor market. Many of the skills learned at Goodwill Industries—doll repair, sorting bags, for instance—could not be used outside. | |||||||||||||
|
Page 1: | |
| 1 | Worn and Discarded, Seemingly Worthless, They Work Strange Transformations. | |
| 2 | A stack of old shoes lay piled on the floor. Some had holes in the soles. Many seemed battered and spent. Just old shoes. | |
| 3 | A man came into the Goodwill plant and asked for work. Bearing a physical handicap, he found it hard to get employment, and now was out of a job. | |
| 4 | He was directed to the old shoe department, and a man began to show how they might be repaired. Many, he found could be equipped with new soles and new heels. Restored to usefulness, they would be bought eagerly by men and women who find it difficult to buy new shoes. | |
| 5 | His handiwork improved as he worked at the pile of shoes, and soon many of the products that came from his bench seemed as good as new. | |
| 6 | OPENS HIS OWN SHOP | |
| 7 | Equipped with a trade, he left the Goodwill Industries and opened a shoe shop of his own. From its earnings, he supported his mother and sister. He bought a truck and started a small transfer business, and gradually added other trucks. He bought a lot and built a home for his mother. | |
| 8 | "Just old shoes," you say? | |
| 9 | A girl abandoned a brutal husband and, seeking a way out of her perplexity, became for a time a prostitute. She soon gave up this life and began making a precarious living doing day work. Out of employment, she came to the Goodwill Industries, and was sent up to the sewing room. | |
| 10 | On the table were great stacks of old clothes -- garments out of style, others badly worn, just as they came from the Goodwill bags. Just old clothes. | |
| 11 | Yet, she found she could repair many. From others, she fashioned new garments. The lining of an old coat made an attractive suit for a child and a man's coat, a pair of trousers for a boy. She had in her fingers an artistry of the needle brought from an old-world country, where generations of women in her family had made fine things and her creations were the envy of the -MISSING TEXT-. | |
| 12 | Then one day she left and no one saw her again for two years. | |
| 13 | One day she came in dressed in the uniform of a nurse. She had been away to school, she said, and now had completed her training. She was then on her first case, and this it was which brought her to the Goodwill Industries again. | |
| 14 | "I went to attend a sick woman," she said, "and found her four children sleeping on the floor, without even a mattress. I want to buy them a bed. | |
| 15 | "You know, I am going to do things for others the way you did for me when I came here, and I want to start out right now by buying this bed out of my own pocket." | |
| 16 | "Just old clothes," did you say? | |
| 17 | Every effort is made to prepare workers at the Goodwill plant for useful roles in society again. Saving of the old shoes and old clothes is but a means to a greater end. Sometimes, persons who come in handicapped or untrained can be taught a trade and sent out, equipped to make their own way. Nearly all can be given a higher conception of life. Friendly sympathy, words of encouragement and a daily religious service contribute to this beneficent end. | |
