Of difference in the quality),

or distributing stale bread and thin soup, together with homilies on the virtues of contentment and the blessing of poverty and work. Along with men, they fell into the swim of modern thought which attempted to render institutions self-supporting through the co-operative efforts of those availing themselves of their privileges. It was on these broad lines of non-sectarianism, diversity of teaching for a sisterhood of women, and the co-operative society in which there is strength, that there was built up for the use of the working-women the various boarding-homes, industrial schools, and stores for the disposal of woman’s handiwork. To soften the harshest experiences of women thrown upon their own resources for necessities of food and shelter, philanthropic women, and men, too, made it their business to establish “boarding-homes,” where the price of entrance was fixed at sums low enough to come within the reach of the average wage-earning woman. The clean, quiet streets usually chosen for these homes, contrasted with the filthy, crowded thoroughfares where the cheap lodging-houses—the only resorts the average friendless working-woman could afford—were most apt to be situated. The difference within was as great as without. In place of the cold, comfortless rooms which, as a rule, were destitute of fire or carpet, and where there was neither reception-room for visitors, nor bath nor laundry for inmates; the model boarding-houses had spacious, well-ventilated bedrooms attractively adorned, with a neat parlor, usually a library or reading-room, well warmed, brightly lighted, and inviting. Privileges of bath-rooms and laundries were added to increase the comforts of the boarders. Two of the best of these homes are to be found in Boston, one on Warrenton, the other on Berkeley Street. These structures, built under the auspices of the Woman’s Christian Association, are provided with electric bells, ventilating appliances, and safeguards against fire. Both houses have, besides offices and attendants, handsome parlors, well-stocked reading-rooms, libraries, and lecture halls. One of them possesses a fine gymnasium. The price for board and lodging varies from $3 to $5.50 per week, but more than one-half of the guests pay from $3 to $4 per week. In the two homes there exist accommodations for about three hundred women. The sums named secure pleasant rooms, well-prepared and neatly served meals, and include, besides washing and ironing, heating and lighting of rooms, the use of reading-rooms, library, parlor, and admission to all entertainments of the association.

In thirteen other cities in the United States there have been established, by the same energetic society, one “home,” smaller, but similar in character to the Boston homes. Connected with all of these, and adding greatly to their usefulness, are departments for giving instruction in sewing, teaching the art of dressmaking, and training woman in housework. Chautauqua circles were organized among the residents, and classes gotten up in which, for nominal sums, girls could be taught the languages, book-keeping, type-writing, stenography, painting, drawing, calisthenics, etc. Employment bureaus were attached, which, by personal application or through correspondence, obtained situations for those who were on its registers for services to be given, or received. To still further extend their helpfulness, another department, called the “Travelers’ Aid,” employed agents to meet incoming steamers and direct unprotected girls to the Association Homes, advise them as to the best and most economical means of transportation, and the best way to secure employment. Several smaller organizations, such as the “Helping Hand,” “Girls’ Friendly Society,” etc., instituted homes that were carried on in much the same way. The benefits of ventilation, cleanliness, and decent behavior were rigidly enforced, while in general the most strenuous efforts were put forth to make the homes so far self-supporting that their residents could look on them as co-operative enterprises, in which, by combination and judicious management, the funds each expended singly, brought them all unitedly, comforts which would have been impossible without such action.

To propagate the idea of the value of co-operation among women, whether workers or not, was perhaps the most useful thing accomplished by the boarding-home societies. So far the number of these institutions has been limited, so that they suggest what could be done rather than indicate what has been accomplished in brightening the lives of the great mass of homeless working-women. In Boston, where these “homes” are most numerous, there are, for a population of eighty thousand wage-earning women, but six of these dwellings. Altogether, the limit of their accommodations is about 387 boarders. In these meager results, for so much energetic, philanthropic work, the abortiveness is shown of private individualistic attempts to supplant by means of model co-operative boarding-homes, the cheap and nasty tenement lodging-houses, situated too often in close proximity to gin-shops, gambling dens and brothels. By the numbers who vainly seek admission into the few boarding-homes that have been established in various large cities, the fact is proved that were the idea of co-operative homes carried out to largest national issues and placed everywhere within reach of wage-earning women, all but the most debased would avail themselves of their privileges, and thus secure the comforts and good living enjoyed so rarely by women whom circumstances compel to labor.

Another phase of work initiated by women, and which, like the boarding-homes, needs only to be carried out on the broad and liberal lines of a national co-operation to become a power for universal good, were the exchanges, or stores, instituted for the purpose of selling hand or machine-made articles of woman’s manufacture, and which gave the maker the full price they brought, less a ten per cent. commission and a membership fee of $5 for maintaining the establishment. In this way, the founder of the Woman’s Exchange hoped to solve the ever-perplexing problem of finding a remunerative market for the work that women had been taught to do in the various art and industrial schools. At the time the first exchange was planned in New York, some ten years ago, thousands of women, graduates from the various art schools, were at work in stores and factories decorating china, painting household adornments such as portières, screens, wall-hangings, and doing all kinds of fancy work at prices but little, if any, beyond the wages of the average worker on men’s and women’s clothing. To direct this work into a channel, where the maker and not the employer would receive the profit, was what the originator of the exchange proposed to do for women pressed by poverty into the ranks of the bread-winners.

From the first, the exchange became popular with a certain class, and had a most phenomenal growth, forty having come into existence during the last decade, all of which are working successfully on the same general plan. A walk through the rooms of the parent institution, now established in a handsome building at 329 Fifth Avenue, shows the number and variety of workers who availed themselves of its privileges. In the salesrooms, hand-painted and embroidered tapestries hang on the walls; artistic screens, painted or embroidered on all conceivable materials, stand in every nook and corner; elaborately decorated china for ornament or table use lies piled on shelves; while textile fabrics of all kinds, made up into articles for wall decorations, bed and table use, or personal wear, are tastefully arranged on counters or within glass cases. On the upper floors in the building, women are kept constantly at work inspecting, marking, and ticketing goods sent in by consignees. In the basement are the storehouse and restaurant for receiving and selling cakes, pickles, preserves, and other edibles, sent to be disposed of for the benefit of the makers.

In this one establishment the sales for the year 1888 amounted to $51,180.26. The aggregate sold in the cake and preserve department amounted to $13,256.89. One consignee of chicken jelly, etc., got during the year $1,256.89. Of two consignees in the cake and preserve department one received $1,019.73, the other $772.42. Things sent to the lunch-room for Sunday night teas brought one consignee the comfortable little income of $965.78. From the sale of children’s wrappers alone, one consignee received $548.66, and one woman for screens, decorated frames, etc., $1105.71. One consignee received during the spring and fall months $217.35 for articles which she had previously made for manufacturers at $2.50 apiece, and which were sold for $35 each. In the order department connected with the exchange, the work done consisted of 1263 pieces of plain sewing, 1784 pieces of English embroidery, 1100 painted articles, and 2033 fancy articles. From the forty other societies then in existence the reports showed a grand aggregate of over one million dollars from sales during the year.

These figures demonstrate how thoroughly practical the scheme is of sending hand-made articles to special magazines to be disposed of for the makers’ benefit. The woman who, by sending her work to the exchange, got $35 for what she, as a wage-earner, had received $2.50 from the manufacturer, got the profit that had previously gone to swell the bank-account of the manufacturer, middle men, and retail dealers. This was the same with all contributors to the exchanges; by employing their own labor they accumulated the premiums which, under the old factory and store system, inured to the benefit of their employers. In establishing the woman’s exchanges, the difficulty was to secure enough women of intelligence to be their own employers and to interest enough women in woman’s work to become patrons of the exchanges instead of the stores. For instance, to meet the expenses of the Fifth Avenue establishment in 1888, the income from all sources was $13,589.56, while the expenses of carrying on the business amounted to $16,318.48. This left a deficit of $2723.92 that had to be met by donations, and which kept the institution on a partly charitable instead of wholly self-supporting basis. As this deficit had lessened with each year, some optimistic thinkers began to hope that the time was coming when it would disappear altogether, and thus allow them to become strictly co-operative instead of philanthropic concerns. A conclusion reached was, that were they once to become independent of charitable donations, they would branch out largely enough in most of the worst paid departments of woman’s work so as to force out those employed on such labor for the vast retail stores. But it was found that an insuperable obstacle to the extension of the exchanges lay in the utter lack of system with which contributors worked. In the matter of production, the regular stores had but little system; still some attempt was made in them to regulate the supply of manufactured goods to meet a possible or expected demand. Contributors to the exchanges had no such guide. Those who made and sent articles for sale could have no opportunity for knowing what others were making and sending. The result was that women living near or afar off in town and country worked completely in the dark. With no finger on the public pulse in the matter of supply and demand for goods, they were obliged for this haphazard work to purchase their own material in small quantities in the retail markets, while the merchant-manufacturers bought theirs in bulk in the cheapest. This could only mean more failures than successes in the disposal of goods made under such conditions. Again, only women possessed of some means could afford to lay out money for materials and wait the uncertain chances of its returning to them with a profit. In consequence, most of those contributing articles to the exchanges for sale were “reduced gentlewomen,” who made use of this means of becoming their own employers, not so much for support, as to better their conditions of living, without the publicity consequent upon working for manufacturers. This in itself made it impossible for the exchanges (as was claimed by their supporters) to have “helped women in general to have hushed the ‘Song of the Shirt.’”[[177]] To the women of the proletariat, the exchanges were not only unknown mediums by reason of their situation in fashionable thoroughfares, but forbidden factors because of their attendant risks and expenses. The number of sewing women helped in them to increased earnings was too insignificant to warrant any hope that the co-operative principles underlying their business methods would ever spread far enough to leave any impress upon prevailing modes of work in the business world. Like all other remedies, instituted by wealthy philanthropists to assist the working-women, they were palliatives for the ills of a few, not curatives for the sufferings of the many.

Much more satisfactory than anything which had been accomplished in the name of philanthropy or charity for working-women were the labor organizations founded by the proletariat and sustained by their own energy and contributions. About 1870, associations of working-people (including women) were inaugurated for the purpose of gaining better social conditions. These were more attractive and beneficial to the laboring class because they lacked that element of restitution of a modicum of withheld wages which tainted all that wealth did for the alleviation of the condition of wage-earning women,[[178]] and, moreover, was built upon the sounder philosophy of an endeavor to organize into bodies capable of striving collectively for their own deliverance, that class of women whom the industrial schools, women’s exchanges, etc., could not reach. The most important of these bodies was the Knights of Labor. Organized openly in 1881 at the Detroit Convention, but more secretly some years before, this body welcomed women into its ranks on the ground of seeking “to gather into one fold all branches of honorable toil, without regard to nationality, sex, creed, or color.” Trade assemblies, composed entirely of working-women, were formed, and the members were taught the beautiful principles on which the order was founded. In amalgamating with knights, women assumed the duties of the new chivalry. Engaging as equals in the undertaking, helping with time and money to carry out the new mission, they sought by Agitation, Education, and Organization to lighten the burden of toil, and to elevate the moral and social condition of mankind. In 1883, one local assembly, composed entirely of women, counted fifteen hundred members. These must all have given adherence to that order’s doctrine of “Equal pay for equal work,” and “woman’s equitable consideration with man in the Nation’s government.” Mrs. Leonora Barry, who had been a factory worker for some years in Central New York, became the chief officer of a trade assembly of nine hundred and twenty-seven women. Later, in 1886, she was elected a delegate to the general assembly, by which she was commissioned “to go forth and educate her sister working-women and the public generally as to their needs and necessities.”

The open declaration of this powerful organization,—that women possessed equal rights with men,—showed, as much as anything else, the advance of public sentiment in regard to women. Its educational influence extended outside the ranks of the order. Most of the women members were drawn from the employees in factories producing clothing, textile fabrics, food, tobacco, etc., and from the trades of typography, telegraphy, and stenography. In the mixed local assemblies women have an equal chance with men to express their views upon subjects bearing on the labor question. And even where women sat quiet, as most frequently happened, without taking share in the debates, one of the valuable purposes of the order was said to be served by the information and larger views which came to them through these discussions. In assemblies composed entirely of women, of whom not one, perhaps, could boast of more than a minor part of a common school education, ideas were advanced for their financial as well as educational benefit. Factory operatives, coming under their influence, became shareholders in co-operative concerns. Co-operative shirt factories, conducted solely by women, were established in Baltimore and New York. A co-operative knitting mill was set up at Little Falls, N. Y., while other co-operative industries throughout the land came, through co-operative principles, into the possession of the workers. A co-operative tailoring establishment in Chicago had its rise in the lock-out of a few factory girls who attended a labor parade without permission. With the luck that comes with pluck, they became possessed of $400, through soliciting subscriptions. With this they went into business and succeeded. It is claimed, that inside of nine months they had done $36,000 worth of business, besides having the gratification of being their own employers.