New Era

RETAIL TRADE

Never in all the long history of charity-operated thrift shops had it been like this.

Once the dingy little side-street stores held only a yawning clerk and a clutter of rummage-sale merchandise. Now: In Chicago a stripteaser is a regular customer of one of the infant Welfare Shops. Weary of material-scrimping war models, she is in the market for glittering sequin evening gowns "that I can slip out of easily." Practically any old phonograph record will sell, and dresses with full-length zippers are snatched out of the hands of delivery men. The Woman's Society of Winnetka's Congregational Church cleared $7,400 in a one-day sale, with more than 5,000 people scrabbling for old lamps, jewelry, and clothes hangers. In swank Lake Forest, upper-crust ladies clamor for silk evening gowns that can be converted to nightgowns.

In San Francisco the Red Cross Salvage Shop gets $50 for battered fur coats.

In Denver Goodwill Industries is getting an average of 71-c- for reconditioned articles which in 1940 brought only an average of 41-c-.

In Washington, D.C. the Thrift Shop, run by six charity organizations, is besieged by people who want old typewriters, sewing machines, refrigerators and clocks. Government workers, patent attorneys, and Blue Bookers comb through the shop's stock, hoping to strike gold (an electric fan or a flatiron).

In Seattle the Orthopedic Thrift Shop, accustomed for years to handling a few Indians at berry-picking time, or Russian sailors laid over in port, is selling all the shoes it can get to war workers.

In Winston-Salem Junior Leaguers discussed closing their Thrift Shop after Pearl Harbor. Last month was their biggest May in twelve years; a clientele which was originally almost 99% Negro now includes many middle-class white families. And Salvation Army thrift shops scattered through the South had upped their sales from $193,799 in 1940 to $256,882 in 1943.

In Manhattan Opportunity Shop, Inc (operated by the Community Service Society, one of the U.S.'s oldest and largest charities) reported a 25% up in sales despite a 12% drop in donations. And the Actor's Thrift Shop has found a customer for the tuxedo of the late Hendrik van Loon (6 ft. 6 in. tall, 85 in. around): the A.W.V.S. bought it to turn into a woman's suit.

Everything is not entirely rosy in the nation's charity stores. Denver's 70-year-old Agnes Lewis, friend of a generation of Larimer Street down-&-outers, has been almost driven out of business by full employment. Most of her customers have gone uppity, and now insist upon Goodwill's reconditioned articles. Atlanta's Salvation Army, bereft of its peacetime unemployables, must sell most of its articles without repair. San Francisco's salvagers lack trucks enough to pick up the gifts. But difficulties or not, the profits of most U.S. thrift stores were up 25 to 200% during 1943.

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