CATEGORIES
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Founder of Goodwill Industries
HELMS, Edgar J. (1863- ). Methodist Minister who developed a plan to provide employment and job training for poor immigrants in the Boston area. Helms put down-and-out men and women to work restoring unwanted garments giving them the opportunity to learn a trade and they earned modest wages as they worked. This cycle of donations, process and wages was the birth of Goodwill Industries (1902) and has remained intact through the years. Helms was ordained at Harvard and took the job no one else wanted. He took charge of the Morgan Chapel in the section of segregated vice at the south end of Boston. Instead of saloons and houses of vice the “Watch and Ward Society” later was called “the most moral section of Boston.” Very uncommon T.L.S., on the imprinted letterhead of “The Morgan Memorial, Boston, Oct. 9, 1931.” Fine response to autographing some photographs sent him. Very large bold signature “E.J. Helms.”........$125.00
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