# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S1317
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 845

' spiritual relief. One “unit” of $7.50 provided assistance to these
¥.six phases of relief in a proportionate measure.

Launched in early October, this “units” program met ready
response from our people. A file of 40,000 screened (bona fide)
% names of needy families abroad was quickly established for the
flood of food packages provided by our people through their
$7.50 unit contributions. So generous was the response that the
_ Emergency Planning Council office by necessity was compelled at
- times to mail as high as 20,000 eleven-pound food packages per week.

Food Packages

: Millions throughout Europe were for years forced to sustain
: themselves with food rations of 1,300 to 1,700 calories per day. What
our food packages, more than 275,000 of them, meant to people in
' shattered and ruined countries, is beyond words. One cannot write
on paper or express by word of mouth what but a pound of fats,
shipped in our food packages, has meant to people who faced
uncertainty of life, whose families were lost, and whose existence
was on the verge of starvation for years.

At the outset of the Emergency Planning Council food-
package program two kinds of packages were shipped to Europe —
$4.50 and $6.00. Within a relatively short time the Council sent
over 180,000 of these eleven-pound packages filled with food and
vitamins, to the stricken in Europe. ;

After this first avalanche of food had been sent across, the
Emergency Planning Council restricted its facilities to the shipping
of only such food packages as were paid for by American donors.
But even then 65,859 eleven-pound food packages were shipped
in 1948, and 16,000 in 1949. Since June of 1948 the Emergency
Planning Council packing facilities in St. Louis were discontinued
because a Danish export company offered to pack choice European
foods at a considerable saving. This saving of postage and handling
charges enabled the Emergency Planning Council to give donors
even more food value for the cost of every package.

For the last triennium the Emergency Planning Council spent
approximately $250,000 for food packages. However, this report
should include the over-all figure of $1,867,557.04, most of which
was expended for food packages since the beginning of the Emer-
gency Planning Council’s activity, in order to show that next to
the Life-giving Word the Council has made its largest item of
expenditure for life-giving bread.

Clothing Packages
At the instigation of the Emergency Planning Council’s vast

relief measures, it was realized early that one of the major things
necessary was clothing. Lutheran World Relief was used at first,