National Thrift Shop Day arrives on Tuesday, August 17, 2027, honoring a kind of store that many Americans once avoided. For a long time, used goods carried a stigma.
Mid-August, Every Year
Every August 17. Its founder, if there was one, left no record.
From Suspicion to Charity Shops
Critics attacked the sale of used goods as early as the colonial era, historian Jennifer Le Zotte has found. Some thought secondhand things were tainted or unhealthy.
Prejudice played a part. In the 1890s, people often bought used goods from rag dealers, many of them Jewish immigrants. Hostile critics called the trade “filthy and predatory.”
Fiction fed the fear. “The Blue Silk,” a May 1884 story in the Saturday Evening Post, followed a young woman who buys a used dress. She is shunned for wearing it and then catches smallpox.
Brigades and burlap bags
Church rummage sales, which sold off society women’s castoffs to raise money for churches and charities, helped pave the way. Then, in 1897, the Salvation Army formed its first salvage brigade.
Men from a Salvation Army shelter gathered unwanted items for resale. In return, they got a meal and a place to sleep.
In 1892, Methodist minister Edgar Helms took over Morgan Chapel, a struggling mission in Boston’s South End. He had asked for a North End settlement house instead.
Donations came from wealthy Boston districts. By 1896, he was going door to door there, collecting donations in burlap bags.
His group officially traces its start to 1902. It hired poor and disabled workers to fix up the goods for sale.
Incorporation came in 1905, under the name Morgan Memorial Cooperative Industries and Stores. The Goodwill Industries name came in 1915, after a Brooklyn workshop copied his methods.
Collection went motorized early. Goodwill’s first four-wheeled trucks hit the road in 1909.
Goodwill introduced its slogan, “Not Charity, But a Chance,” in 1921. Store receipts topped $1 million that year.
Hard times
By the 1929 crash, more than half of the Salvation Army’s yearly budget came from resale shops. The Depression that followed pushed more families toward thrift stores.
War changed the pitch again. After Pearl Harbor, Goodwill adopted a new slogan, “Salvage for Victory.”
The brand got friendlier after the war. Milton Caniff’s “Good Willy” cartoon became a familiar symbol in the 1950s, and Norman Rockwell gave Goodwill a painting, “The Paycheck,” in 1958.
Why Thrift Stores Matter
Le Zotte argues that these charities “linked charity to capitalism” long before anyone spoke of a nonprofit sector. Shoppers’ dollars paid for jobs and relief.
World War I helped the idea spread. Le Zotte describes a wartime “culture of giving,” as middle- and working-class Americans answered public appeals. Immigration mattered too, as newcomers relied on secondhand goods to settle in.
That model still runs today. Resale money makes up about 15% of the Salvation Army’s annual budget, and its Adult Rehabilitation Centers often rely on store income.
Secondhand sales are big business. They add roughly $53 billion a year to the U.S. economy, the Salvation Army estimates.
Shoppers are a sizable group. About 16 to 18 percent of Americans visit a thrift store in a given year, according to an industry estimate cited by JSTOR Daily.
Ways to Thrift on August 17
- Fill a bag with clothes to donate, a nod to Helms and his burlap sacks.
- Shop at a Salvation Army store, where sales help fund its rehabilitation centers.
- Ask your local Goodwill which job programs its sales support.
- Buy a vintage dress and wear it proudly, the opposite of what “The Blue Silk” warned readers about.
- Read Le Zotte’s 2013 article in The New England Quarterly for the full history.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Edgar Helms?
A Methodist minister born in Malone, New York, in January 1863. He died in December 1942, survived by twelve children.
Who designed the Goodwill logo?
Boston designer Joseph Selame created it in the 1960s.
How many Goodwills existed by 1920?
Fifteen, counting the Boston original, with backing from the Methodist church.
Did secondhand shops exist before thrift stores?
Yes. They thrived in Elizabethan England, centuries before charities opened thrift shops.