“Among the number of charities which seem to be constantly increasing in our large city, we must again bring to the notice of its friends the Woman’s Work Exchange and Decorative Art Society of Brooklyn.” Annual Report, 1889.
The object of the Woman’s Exchange is thus seen to be charity, not charity pure and simple, but charity having a double end in view. The first and most important aim is the direction into remunerative channels of the work of “gentlewomen suddenly reduced to abject penury,” with the secondary aim of encouraging “the principle of self-help in the minds of girls and women, who in the future, if necessary, will be helpful and not helpless when misfortune comes.” In carrying out its object, the exchange receives under specified conditions all articles coming under the three general classes of domestic work, needle-work, and art-work.
The domestic department includes all forms of food that can be prepared by the consigners in their own homes and sold through the exchange. These articles form a dozen different classes and comprise more than two hundred and fifty varieties. They include every form of bread, pastry, cake, small cakes, cookies, cold meats, salads, soups, special and fancy desserts, preserves, jellies, jams, pickles, sauces, and delicacies for the sick.[17] In the department of needle-work nearly a hundred different articles are enumerated by the different exchanges, and the number is practically without limit, since it includes every form of plain and fancy sewing. The art department is for the special encouragement of decorative art, and its possibilities as well as actual achievements are very great. These three departments are found in all the exchanges, but each exchange, according to its locality and the consequent needs of the community, adds its own special line of work. A few receive scientific and literary work, others arrange for cleaning and mending lace, re-covering furniture, the care of fine bric-à-brac, writing and copying, the preparation of lunches for travelers and picnic parties, and a few take orders for shopping. All the exchanges have connected with them an order department, which is considered an especially satisfactory and remunerative part of their work.
In fulfilling its aim, the exchange thus enters as a competitor into the industrial field, though without consideration on its own part of this side of its work; and it is as an economic factor, rather than as a charitable organization, that it is considered in this chapter. The place it has already won in this field is shown by the fact that there are now in operation about seventy-five exchanges, a few in small places in thinly settled localities having been abandoned, and these are scattered through twenty-three states and the District of Columbia. A few of them are carried on by private enterprise, and make no public report, and several organizations have as yet made no statement of their financial condition. Sixty-six of them, however, receive work from nearly sixteen thousand consigners, to whom they paid last year, according to their last annual reports, a total amount of more than $400,000. The following table shows the amount paid consigners by the ten largest Exchanges:
It is of interest also to note the total amount paid to consigners by different exchanges since their organization.
The following table will show this:
| New York Exchange for Woman’s Work (12 years), | $417,435 |
| Cincinnati Women’s Exchange (8 years), | 175,130 |
| New Orleans Christian Woman’s Exchange (10 years), | 173,223 |
| Boston Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union (6 years), | 148,588 |
| St. Louis Woman’s Exchange (8 years), | 55,000 |
| San Francisco Woman’s Exchange (5 years), | 50,000 |
| Rhode Island (Providence) Exchange for Woman’s Work (10 years), | 48,469 |
| Richmond (Va.) Exchange for Woman’s Work (7 years), | 27,324 |
| St. Joseph (Mo.) Exchange for Woman’s Work (6 years), | 19,233 |
The Woman’s Exchange regarded as an economic factor must be considered in three aspects: (1) As a business enterprise; (2) from the point of view of the producer; (3) from the standpoint of the consumer.
Viewed purely as a business enterprise, the exchange is a failure. Having charity to a particular class as its object pure and simple, no other result could be expected. Aside from the few private exchanges that have been started as business ventures, but two or three are self-supporting. That at New Orleans has been self-supporting from its organization, and it has been one of the best organized and most successful of all the associations. Some of the organizations go so far as to say that self-support has never been an object with them.[18] In the great majority of the exchanges a commission of ten per cent is charged on all goods sold, but this sum is inadequate to meet current expenses. The exchange, therefore, relies for its support upon private contributions and the ordinary means adopted by other benevolent organizations for increasing their revenues.