# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S659
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 659

[approximately $250,000 for food packages. However, this report —
Evhould include the over-all figure of $1,867,557.04, most of which
Ewas expended for food packages since the beginning of the Emer-
egency Planning Council’s activity, in order to show that next to
Ethe Life-giving Word the Council has made its largest item of
Eexpenditure for life-giving bread.

Clothing Packages
At the instigation of the Emergency Planning Council’s vast
elief measures, it was realized early that one of the major things
necessary was clothing. Lutheran World Relief was used at first,

Be : through whom more than 750 tons were sent to Europe in bulk
" ‘form. Eventually an eleven-pound clothing package was also sent
abroad, in fashion very similar to the eleven-pound food package.
«This was done primarily because it was a more personal way of
. giving, more practical, and more distributable to various sections
of Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, and France.
..By 1947 the Emergency Planning Council was sending clothing
packages regularly every. two months to thousands of needy people,
“to orphanages, to refugees, to American chaplains, for distribution
< to youth centers, to congregations, and to wherever naked and ill-
. Clad bodies begged for a little clothing wherewith to keep warm.
_In all, 21,000 families living in many different countries, not just
_ Germany, were recipients of our eleven-pound clothing packages.
-, Combining the eleven-pound clothing packages and other bulk
- clothing shipments, a total of 614,189 pounds, or 307 tons, were
E~ sent during the years 1947-1949.

Because of the high cost of postage the eleven-pound cloth-
e ing packages were discontinued in April of 1948. Since then
; mostly Church World Service facilities have been used. Because
Church World Service has a large regional clothing depot in
... Webster Groves, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, the Emergency Plan-
. ning Council clothing shipments in bulk were continued with little
‘* or no interruption.

It is, of course, impossible to itemize the various types of
clothing sent to Europe during the last three years. Most of it
was used clothing, reconditioned before distribution abroad. A
number of shipments included also such special items as 6,500
¥ new children’s shoes, 700 fur-lined caps, 10,000 surplus army
blankets, ministerial gowns, bicycle tires, 1,300 woolen under-
* garments.

However, whatever the shipments contained, this is certain,
a every pound of clothing, whether new or old, was appreciated and
cherished by those to whom it was sent. Tens of thousands of
letters, most of them carefully filed in our office, testify to the
; good accomplished by this phase of our Church’s relief work.

A