eggs, a little milk, a lump of butter, a pinch of salt, sweetening
to taste, flour enough to thicken; give a good beating and bake
according to judgment.” More than all this, it has pointed out to
women a means of support that can be carried on within their own
homes, and is perfectly compatible with other work necessarily
performed there. It has in effect opened up a new occupation to
women, in that it has taught them that their accomplishments may
become of pecuniary value, and a talent for the more prosaic
domestic duties be turned into a fine art and made remunerative. It
has enabled many women who have a taste for household employments
in their various forms to take up such occupations as a business,
when they would otherwise have drifted into other occupations for
which they have had no inclination. The exchange thus assumes a not
unimportant place in the history of woman’s occupations. The factory
system of manufactures transferred the labor of many women from the
home of the producer to the business establishment of a corporation.
The anti-slavery agitation and the founding of Mount Holyoke Seminary
and Oberlin College gave women a more prominent place as teachers
and in the professions. The Civil War opened the doors of mercantile
pursuits. It has been through the Woman’s Exchange that women have
been taught that a means of support lies open to them at their own
doors; and thus the exchange has done something to relieve the
pressure in over-crowded occupations.
The advantage that has been taken of this new idea is widespread.
The sixteen thousand consigners on the books of the exchange are
but a part of the still larger number of women who are turning to
practical advantage their tastes for sewing and cooking in all of
their various forms. Before the opening of the exchange, as still,
indeed, women seeking remunerative employment were forced to go into
one of the four great occupations open to women--work in factories,
teaching, domestic service, and work in shops. But it has been
impossible for all women desiring occupation to find it in these four
great classes of employment. Many desire employment, but are forced
to carry it on in their own homes; others have no taste whatever for
any of the lines of work mentioned; and conditions under which many
kinds of work are performed render other occupations obnoxious to
others; still others prefer work which gives greater opportunity for
the exercise of individual taste and ingenuity than do some of these
occupations. Such women have found through the exchange a means of
support and opportunity for work which they could not find elsewhere.
They are learning that society is coming to respect more the woman
who supports herself by making good bread, cakes, and preserves than
the woman who teaches school indifferently, gives poor elocutionary
performances, or becomes a mere mechanical contrivance in a shop or
factory. They are finding that the stamp of approval is ultimately
to be put on the way work is done rather than on the occupation
itself. Thus it is that hundreds of women from Maine to Texas and
California are obtaining for themselves and others partial or entire
support by making and offering for sale, either through business
houses or private orders, cake, bread, preserved fruit, salads,
desserts, and an innumerable number of special articles, in addition
to the products of artistic needle-work and decorative art-work. Not
only are these articles found in the large cities, but in country
villages many women are engaged in such work and often find a ready
sale for it without the trouble and expense of sending it to the
city markets. In one village of only five hundred inhabitants one
young woman makes and sells daily thirty loaves of bread. In a small
Eastern village another bakes and sells daily from thirty to a
hundred loaves of bread according to the season, and cake and pastry
in the same proportion.
The demand for work of this kind is as yet limited, and therefore the
net profits are in most cases small; yet in some instances a fair
competence has been secured. One person in a country town has made a
hand-some living by making chicken salad which has been sold in New
York City. Another has cleared four hundred dollars each season by
making preserves and jellies on private orders. A third has built
up a large business, employing from three to five assistants, in
making cake. Still another, living near a Southern city, has built
up “an exceedingly remunerative business” by selling to city grocers
pickles, preserves, cakes and pies. One cause given for her success
has been the fact that “she has allowed no imperfect goods to be
sold; everything has been the best, whether she has gained or lost
on it.” A fifth has netted one thousand dollars a year by preparing
mince-meat and making pies of every description; and a sixth has,
with the assistance of two daughters, netted yearly one thousand five
hundred dollars above all expenses, except rent, in preparing fancy
lunch dishes on shortest notice and dishes for invalids. Still one
more began by borrowing a barrel of flour, and now has a salesroom
where she sells daily from eighty to a hundred dozen Parker House
rolls, in addition to bread made in every conceivable way, from every
kind of grain. More moderate incomes are made by others in putting
up pure fruit juices and shrubs, in preparing fresh sweet herbs, in
making Saratoga potatoes, and consommé in the form of jelly ready to
melt and serve. So successful have been these ventures that some of
those engaging in them have acquired not only a financial profit,
but a wide reputation for the superiority of their goods. In some
instances the articles made are included in the catalogue of goods
sold by the leading dealers in fine groceries in New York City.
These illustrations have been taken from the single department of
domestic work; similar ones could be given from the class of plain
and fancy needle-work and decorative art work. Surely it is better
for the individual and better for society that these persons should
turn to useful account their various talents, rather than attempt to
enter many of the overcrowded occupations and do work for which they
have neither talent nor inclination.
But not only is the exchange directly and indirectly of value to
producers, it is of equal importance to consumers. It simplifies
many housekeeping problems in families where there is more work than
can be performed by one domestic employee and not enough for two, by
making it possible to purchase for the table and other household
purposes many articles made out of the house of the consumer. In
a similar way it is of assistance in all families who do “light
housekeeping.” It also enables them to purchase articles ready for
use which have been made under the most favorable conditions. A
specific example of this is seen in the preparation of fruit for
winter use. This is at present done in the family of each consumer,
but the canning in cities, by individual families, of fruit, often
in an over-ripe or a half-ripe condition, is as anomalous as would
be the making to-day of dairy products in the same localities. The
canning factory has come into existence to meet the demand, but the
canning factory cannot meet the needs of private families, since the
great perfection as regards results is secured only when articles
are handled in small quantities. If all fruits could be preserved in
the localities where they are produced, the consumer would gain not
only in securing a better article than can now be produced after
shipment, but the cost would ultimately be lessened, since fruit
could be thus preserved at less expense than when it is shipped to
cities and there sold at a price including cost of transportation and
high rents. Ripe fruit demands the most speedy and therefore the most
expensive modes of transportation; preserved fruits can be shipped at
leisure, by inexpensive methods. The consumer must also be indirectly
benefited as well as the producer, from the fact that such a policy
would prevent a glut in the market of such perishable articles and
the consequent discouragement on the part of the producer, sometimes
ending in a resolution to grow no more fruit for market, owing to the
loss entailed. What is true of the purchase of fruit thus prepared
is true also of numerous other articles. Scores of articles such
as boned turkey, calf’s-foot jelly, chicken jelly, chicken broth,
chicken croquettes and chicken salad, pressed veal, mince-meat,
bouillon, plum pudding and many miscellaneous articles could be
thus produced under more advantageous conditions than at present.
Moreover, many abandoned farms could be utilized as fruit farms, or
for other purposes, which are now too remote from shipping centres
to permit the transportation of ripe fruit, but could be made of use
through the exchange.
Another advantage gained by the consumers is that they are thus able
to take advantage of specialized labor. This, again, is evident in
the domestic department. The consumer is usually obliged to depend on
the skill of a single cook or baker, while through the exchange the
works of many producers are placed side by side in competition, and
thus in the end the highest standard is secured. For both producer
and consumer, therefore, the exchange is of advantage in thus
affording an avenue for specialized work. It thus makes possible to
a certain extent the division of labor which has been but partially
accomplished in the household.
Another field of work open to the exchange is in becoming a medium
for the exchange of workers as well as of work--of affording a means
of communication between workers in different lines or between
the producer and consumer. Very much of the work now done in the
house by those living there could be done to better advantage by
those coming in from outside. Special skill in arranging rooms,
hanging pictures, preparing for lunches, teas, or other social
entertainments, repairing furniture and wardrobes, fine laundry-work,
special table-service, etc., could be performed for housekeepers by
those who retain their own homes and yet are able and anxious to give
a few hours daily to outside work. The exchange, through a bureau
of information, could accomplish much for both those wishing work
and those wishing workers, as well as in a business way for itself.
In many ways, it is thus seen, the exchange is in harmony with the
economic and industrial development of the time. As far as this
is true it has in it the elements of permanence. Wherever it runs
at right angles to present economic tendencies, it must be open to
criticism and also contain in itself the germs of subsequent failure.
If all idea of charity _per se_ could be eliminated from the
exchange, if the word “gentlewoman” could be dropped from the pages
of its reports, the by-law limiting consigners to self-supporting
women stricken out, its consigners known by name instead of by
number, and the idea abandoned that it is to help women to help
themselves only “when misfortune comes;” if it could cease to be
supported by donations, kermesses, charity balls, and miscellaneous
entertainments; if it could refuse to constitute itself a judge
of its consigners’ necessities; if the name could be changed to
Household Exchange, or one signifying the character of the goods
sold rather than the nature of the makers; if, in other words, the
Woman’s Exchange could be put on a purely business basis and become
self-supporting, it would cease to be what it now is, “a palliative
for the ills of the few,” and become what it aims to be, “a curative
for the sufferings of the many.”
FOOTNOTES:
[14] This article was first published in _The Forum_, May, 1892. It
is now republished without alteration from the original manuscript.
In the intervening years some exchanges then existing have been
abandoned, and new ones have been organized, but a somewhat careful
inquiry has disclosed no essential modifications of the principles
for which the Woman’s Exchange stood in 1892. The conclusions reached
at that time therefore remain unchanged.
[15] Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Ladies’ Depository
Association for 1890.
[16] Annual Report for 1890.
[17] A very full list is given by F. A. Lincoln, _Directory of
Exchanges for Woman’s Work_, pp. 24-26.
[18] “But it is not to be understood, because of this surplus, that
the Woman’s Exchange is in any sense self-supporting. Such is not to
be expected, and has never been any part of our scheme. The surplus
comes, as was always anticipated, from public benevolence.” _Third
Annual Report Woman’s Exchange_, San Francisco, California.
[19] How difficult the task is may be inferred from the following
extracts from annual reports of two exchanges.
“While we can by watchfulness avoid any considerable number of
such transactions (consignment of goods by other than needy and
distressed gentlewomen) on the part of the residents of this coast,
we are utterly helpless in cases coming from the other side of the
continent, for which reason I think it is just and prudent to stop
such exhibits altogether.”
“A prevalent opinion in the community, and one that does us no little
harm, is that we help many well-to-do women. It is a very difficult,
as well as a very delicate matter to learn just how needy our
depositors are; we do not attempt to do so. We assume that they need
to earn money from the fact that they desire to become depositors.
But we gradually become more or less familiar with their lives, and
we can assure you, as a rule, our money is well paid out.”
“Sometimes people unwittingly make very damaging statements. A
short time ago a lady remarked to a friend that the exchange was
not accomplishing any good--it only helped well-to-do women to earn
pin-money, and verified her statement by giving the name of a wealthy
lady who said she was a depositor. The matter was inquired into and
the said name was found, but we also learned that the ticket had been
bought to give to a needy woman, who became the depositor.”
The Riverside Press
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