The National Catholic Register : From Business to Church Work to Public Service

Some politicians do get it. In this interview by Wayne Forrest, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri of Rhode Island talks about, among other things, serving as program director for Catholic Relief Services in Jamaica:

I learned a huge lesson from Jamaica's Archbishop Samuel Carter, who said to me, "I don't want you to give my people anything."

He said, "I want them to feel as though they earned it. When you give, the giver is always in the position of superiority; the receiver is always in the position of inferiority. When you give to someone who doesn't feel as though they have earned it, you diminish them as a person in their self worth."

It knocked me off the chair, because I never really thought of it that way. As I thought about it later, he is absolutely right. The notion that somehow, in my giving something good I would be diminishing the self worth of that person, stuck with me.

This reminds me of a biography of "The Goodwill Man": Edgar James Helms, by Beatrice Plumb. Or rather it reminds me of the one story in the book I can't get out of my mind.

Helms was a minister in Boston. When poor people hit hard by an economic downturn came to him begging for help, he went to the rich people of Boston and asked for money. The rich gave. He used the money to buy clothes and food and pay rent for the most needy - but it was soon gone. He went back to the rich people. But now the depression had hit them, too, and they didn't feel they had money to spare. So he went off and thought and prayed, and it came to him that the rich might not have ready cash, but they could perhaps give him their cast-off clothing. Back he went. The people of Back Bay and Beacon Hill gave and gave; he filled bag after bag. As the story goes, when the streetcar conductor said enough was enough because of the space taken up by the bulging bags, Helms manned a wheelbarrow and collected used clothes that way.

When he thought he had enough clothes to take care of the worst needs at least, he scattered the clothes on the pews, and put a sign on the door inviting people to show up the next morning to help themselves. They showed up in great numbers. When he let them in, they went crazy: stampeding, shoving, snarling, grabbing and fighting even for clothes they couldn't use.

The minister elbowed his way through the mob, got to his pulpit, and proceeded to pound his fist and yell at them, saying that they could not act this way in the House of God. Go away, he said. I will find another way to get the clothes to you, he said. He finally got them kicked out, and then he sat down and grieved. He had meant to help, but he had somehow turned formerly respectable people into thugs, even animals. At some point, he concluded that it was his fault - that to give something they need to people is to rob them of their self-respect.

The next day, he turned a small office room into a store where he sold clothes cheaply, twice a week. And then he decided to find a way to provide jobs and wages. And that's how Goodwill Industries was born. It's what Helms called "Not Charity But a Chance".

"The Goodwill Man": Edgar James Helms, by Beatrice Plumb, T.S. Denison & Company, Inc., Minneapolis, MN, c. 1965, 232pp, illustrated with b/w photos, is out of print, but as of post time it was easy to find good used copies at online stores, including some for $5 or less.