Philanthropic Capitalism and the Rise of American Thrift Stores
In the early twentieth century, Christian-centered, charitable groups commercialized marginal economic territory. By aligning thrift store’s work and material goods with American, Protestant ideals of frugality, cleanliness, industriousness, and philanthropy, the Salvation Army and Goodwill Industries compensated for the association of used goods exchange with immorality, foreignness, and filth.
The Salvation Army’s and Goodwill Industries’ goods salvaging programs coincided with reforms of the Progressive Era. Thrift stores followed much of the same logic as settlement homes, as well as new philanthropists’ models of “scientific giving.” The new turn-of-the-century commercial world shaped these businesses. Thrift stores, which for the first half of the century were sometimes also called “family service stores” or “social service stores,” forged a fascinating nexus between charity and capitalism decades ahead of the designation “non-profit sector.” Industrial capitalism and its urban backdrop set the stage for the codification of second-hand commerce.
The transition from charity to business is monumental. Yet scholars have little acknowledged the importance of second-hand stores, even when addressing the institutions responsible for their creation. The Salvation Army, for example, has been the subject of many studies, yet very little scholarship exists on the ubiquitous Salvation Army thrift stores themselves, and even less on the businesses of Goodwill. Understanding how these charities invented the thrift store business changes how we think about consumer culture, and also the history of business, philanthropy, industrialization, immigration, and urbanization.
Ultimately, thrift store businesses succeeded because they conformed conventional charity and civic responsibility to the conditions of modern consumerism, adapting the virtues of thrift to the rewards of industrial capitalism within the context of progressive social reform.
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