Franklin's Thrift
Franklin's Thrift

Author: David Blankenhorn

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press

Published: 2011-04-15

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1599473526

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Americans today often think of thrift as a negative value—a miserly hoarding of resources and a denial of pleasure. Even more telling, many Americans don’t even think of thrift at all anymore. Franklin’s Thrift challenges this state of mind by recovering the rich history of thrift as a quintessentially American virtue. The contributors to this volume trace how the idea and practice of thrift have been a vital part of the American vision of economic freedom and social abundance. For Benjamin Franklin, who personified and promoted the idea, thrift meant working productively, consuming wisely, saving proportionally, and giving generously. Franklin’s thrift became the cornerstone of a new kind of secular faith in the ordinary person’s capacity to shape his lot and fortune in life. Later chapters document how thrift moved into new domains in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It became the animating idea behind social movements to promote children’s school savings, create mutual savings banks and credit unions for working men and women, establish a federal savings bond program, and galvanize the nation to conserve resources during two world wars. Historians, enthusiasts of Americana or traditional American virtues, and anyone interested in resolving our society’s current financial woes will find much to treasure in this diverse collection, with topics ranging from the inspirational lessons we can learn from the film It’s a Wonderful Life to a history of the roles played by mutual savings banks, credit unions, and thrift stores in America’s national thrift movement. It also includes actual policy recommendations for our present situation.

Thrifty Science
Thrifty Science

Author: Simon Werrett

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-01-09

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 022661025X

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If the twentieth century saw the rise of “Big Science,” then the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were surely an age of thrift. As Simon Werrett’s new history shows, frugal early modern experimenters transformed their homes into laboratories as they recycled, repurposed, repaired, and reused their material possessions to learn about the natural world. Thrifty Science explores this distinctive culture of experiment and demonstrates how the values of the household helped to shape an array of experimental inquiries, ranging from esoteric investigations of glowworms and sour beer to famous experiments such as Benjamin Franklin’s use of a kite to show lightning was electrical and Isaac Newton’s investigations of color using prisms. Tracing the diverse ways that men and women put their material possessions into the service of experiment, Werrett offers a history of practices of recycling and repurposing that are often assumed to be more recent in origin. This thriving domestic culture of inquiry was eclipsed by new forms of experimental culture in the nineteenth century, however, culminating in the resource-hungry science of the twentieth. Could thrifty science be making a comeback today, as scientists grapple with the need to make their research more environmentally sustainable?

Thrift Shopping
Thrift Shopping

Author: Sandy Donovan

Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 1467763101

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Looking for just the right outfit for a big party? Or maybe you want to build some funky shelves for your bedroom. Instead of heading for the mall, consider checking out a thrift store. It's a great way to grab some awesome bargains. Thrift shopping started out as a way for charitable organizations to earn money for their missions by selling a variety of items at reasonable prices. Over the decades, it's become a hot recreational activity for all kinds of people, including celebrities! Thrifting opportunities range from traditional thrift stores, consignment shops, vintage and antique stores, flea markets and garage sales, to auctions, estate sales, and online sites such as eBay, Etsy, and Poshmark. You can find just about anything: clothing, jewelry, accessories, sporting goods, vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, furniture, home goods, books, artwork, toys, gift ideas, even cars. The sky's the limit! Check out Thrift Shopping to discover how to thrift and where to thrift. Learn how to judge quality, when and where to shop for bargains, and how to organize your own yard sale. Get tips for upcycling your thrift-shopping finds for your own personal use or to resell them. With a little imagination and not a whole lot of money, you can find—or make—unique treasures while going green with your shopping habits.

From Goodwill to Grunge
From Goodwill to Grunge

Author: Jennifer Le Zotte

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-02-02

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1469631911

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In this surprising new look at how clothing, style, and commerce came together to change American culture, Jennifer Le Zotte examines how secondhand goods sold at thrift stores, flea markets, and garage sales came to be both profitable and culturally influential. Initially, selling used goods in the United States was seen as a questionable enterprise focused largely on the poor. But as the twentieth century progressed, multimillion-dollar businesses like Goodwill Industries developed, catering not only to the needy but increasingly to well-off customers looking to make a statement. Le Zotte traces the origins and meanings of "secondhand style" and explores how buying pre-owned goods went from a signifier of poverty to a declaration of rebellion. Considering buyers and sellers from across the political and economic spectrum, Le Zotte shows how conservative and progressive social activists--from religious and business leaders to anti-Vietnam protesters and drag queens--shrewdly used the exchange of secondhand goods for economic and political ends. At the same time, artists and performers, from Marcel Duchamp and Fanny Brice to Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, all helped make secondhand style a visual marker for youth in revolt.

A brief history of thrift
A brief history of thrift

Author: Alison Hulme

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1526128853

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This book surveys ‘thrift’ through its moral, religious, ethical, political, spiritual and philosophical expressions, focussing in on key moments such as the early Puritans and Post-war rationing, and key characters such as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Smiles and Henry Thoreau. The relationships between thrift and frugality, mindfulness, sustainability, and alternative consumption practices are explained, and connections made between myriad conceptions of thrift and contemporary concerns for how consumer cultures impact scarce resources, wealth distribution, and the Anthropocene. Ultimately, the book returns the reader to an understanding of thrift as it was originally used - to ‘thrive’ - and attempts to re-cast thrift in more collective, economically egalitarian terms, reclaiming it as a genuinely resistant practice.