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.