Library Collections: Document: Full Text


NDC - OPM - OPASC - ETC

Creator: n/a
Date: July 25, 1941
Publication: The Goodwill Bulletin
Source: Goodwill Industries International, Inc., Archives, Robert E. Watkins Library


Page 1:

1  

Things are moving rapidly in National Defense. Each of the different units of the Federal Government are attempting to regulate and develop interest in activities which are, or they believe to be, within their sphere. It is difficult to know just what the next regulation or defense promotional program will be that may effect the work of the Goodwill Industries.

2  

It is apparent from statements in the daily press that dislocations of employment and the possibility of temporary unemployment occasioned by curtailment in production of certain products are secondary to the adjustments necessary to shift supplies and labor in the defense program. The automobile industry curtailment is one example.

3  

In Goodwill Industries we must be ready for Defense activities that may affect our work, especially our potential supply of discarded materials. This we understand and we will, of course, co-operate to the limit in bona fide Defense activities. But there is another type of Indirect "Defense activity" abroad. It is the development of projects on the part of communities and organizations to help in Defense by collecting anything any news article in any newspaper indicates may have value in defense without even waiting to ascertain from official sources that the material needed cannot be secured through regular channels.

4  

An example of the governmental agency directed project was the "Aluminum For Defense" Campaign. The Office of Price and Control of Supplies (Mr. Henderson) indicated that there was a shortage of aluminum. The National Defense Council ( Mayor LaGuardia) saw an opportunity to develop a national interest in Defense and at the same time secure thousands of tons of aluminum by asking the housewives of America to donate all the aluminum pots, pans, etc., they could spare. The campaign was put on and accomplished both of its purposes. The aluminum donated to the Federal Government for Defence became the property of the Office of Production Management (Mr. Knudsen). Local committees were not even allowed any campaign promotion expense cut of the income received from the sale of aluminum. The waste material dealers and smelters were not allowed to make any profit on the handling of the material. Even the income from the sale of "by-products" of the aluminum collection was turned over to the government for use in Defense. Thus the Aluminum For Defense Campaign was the result of the activities of three different Defense units of the Federal Government and the National Defense program was the direct and only beneficiary of the campaign.

5  

An example of the other type of activity is that of a local community that went into action, when a leader of the community read in the daily press that there would be a shortage of paper and rags, and immediately put on an intensive program to collect paper and rags. Incidentally papers included good magazines which could be sold in Goodwill stores and rags could include repairable clothing. The material collected was sold to salvage dealers and the money turned over to local youth agencies. The publicity indicated that the material was being collected for Defense and was going into Defense through the regular commercial channels and that the money received from its sale was being used to send boys to summer camps.

6  

In order to offset this kind of informal "Collection for Defense'', it would appear that Goodwill Industries should use publicity and stories to indicate that the collection of discarded materials by our organizations do save waste and that the material flows into the general Defense program through the regular commercial channels and that the income from the sale of materials donated to the Goodwill Industries helps to give work and wages to handicapped persons.

7  

Your National Executive will appreciate receiving word of all types of Defense appeals in local communities and the way in which the local Goodwill Industries handles campaigns put on by non-Defense agencies in the name of Defense and have in them the possibility of reducing the supply of discarded materials available to Goodwill.

8  

He also desires word of definite ways in which local Goodwill Industries are co-operating in the National Defense Program.

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