The Business of Charity: The Womans Exchange Movement, 1832-1900 (Women in American History)
by Kathleen Waters Sander
Category: Business & Economics

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 for economic independence.