(This story was originally written and recorded for Retrocast 38, released on December 3, 2025.)
Have you ever noticed that when you give to one charity, you suddenly get a deluge of donation requests from other charities in the mail?
And they always include some sort a gift: be it address labels, notepads, greeting cards, and so on. I honestly don’t know if there is a technical term for what they are doing, but I have been calling it guilt mail for years — as in they are attempting to guilt me into making a donation because they gave me a free gift.
Which is why I found the next story so interesting. It’s a twist on that guilt mail concept.
It’s a syndicated story from April 1946 of a 34-year-old Chicago businessman named George Barr.
He had done very well for himself, having been the founder of the George Barr Chemical Company. At the time the story was published, his company — which made shampoos and tonics — had sales exceeding $1 million. (Approximately $16.7 million today).
Barr employed 150 workers in his plant, with 90% of them having some sort of disability — whether that be deafness, blindness, amputation, or paralysis.
Why such an interest in those with these disabilities? Simple: Barr himself was disabled. Shortly after graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1932, he lost his leg in an automobile accident.
He was also incredibly generous with his money. But it was his unique approach to what I’m calling guilt mail that got him featured in newspapers all across the nation.
What he did was randomly choose 500 people from the telephone book, and on March 11, 1946, he mailed each person a letter.
Also enclosed was $1 (approximately $16.70 today), explaining that it was his donation to the Illinois Association for the Crippled.
All he asked of the recipients was that they mail back the $1 to him and also enclose as much as they wanted to add to it to help the Association.
He wrote, “I’m sending these dollars in the belief that every one will come back, and that each dollar will bring several more with it.
“Remember, both my dollar and your dollars go to help crippled children and adults. Have I made a good investment? Are people really kind — or really heartless?”
So, did it work?
Of the 500 letters sent out, 411 replied. 339 sent the letter back with additional funds ranging from $0.25 to $100 ($1670 today). 72 sent the dollar back with no additional donation. In total, Barr received $2069.50 ($34,500 today) back, in addition to the dollar bills he had included.
Barr was so satisfied with the results that he planned to send the same letter to 500 more people.
Did he ever do it?
There was no follow-up, but a story in the Chicago Tribune made it clear that he never stopped helping the handicapped. The article described how he was awarded a trophy for “best performance of the year in behalf of the physically handicapped” in Washington, DC. It was there, on August 18, 1951, that he was presented the award by none other than US President Harry S. Truman.
His company grew to be one of the nation’s largest producers of aerosol products, serving companies both big and small. That included Procter & Gamble, Turtle Wax, Helene Curtis, and others.
Barr sold his business to Pittsburgh Railways in April 1962 for $4 million ($43 million today). That company was renamed Pittway in 1967 and later found its biggest success selling First Alert smoke alarms. Pittway was then sold to Honeywell for $2.2 billion in February 2000.
As for George Barr, he was 77 years old when he passed away in his Chicago home on November 11, 1989.
