Buiness Of Charity: The Womans Exchange Movement, 1832-1900; Author: Sander, Kathleen Waters; Author: Waters-Sander, Kathleen; Paperback

Author: Sander, Kathleen Waters; Author: Waters-Sander, Kathleen
Women in American History; Paperback; 24 Photographs
208 pages
Published: November 1998
University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252067037

In the nineteenth century Woman's Exchanges formed a vast national network that created economic alternatives for financially vulnerable women in a world that permitted few respectable employment options.One of the nation's oldest continuously operating voluntary movements -- many are still in business after more than a century -- the Exchanges were fashionable and popular shops where women who had fallen on hard times could sustain themselves by selling their handiwork on consignment -- without having to seek public employment. Over the century Exchanges became an important forum for entrepreneurial growth and an example of how women used the voluntary sector -- which had so successfully served as a conduit for their political and social reforms -- to advance opportunities fo