220 MAY WILKINSON MOUNT 



Skidmore, "for the quarrels among the kind of domestics we 

 could then afford brought the police officers to the door with 

 the remark that they did not know how to settle the troubles 

 of these Christian women!" Mrs. Roberts called and led the 

 first great prayer meeting of women in New York, that mothers 

 of the seventh regiment might pray for their sons who had left 

 for service in the Civil war; while, like monuments to this lovely 

 philanthropist and her assistants, stand three commodious 

 homes in the city, filled with happy working women. The 

 philanthropic woman, as a rule, is conservative. She does not 

 attack man's prerogatives except on the neutral ground of 

 typewriting and bookkeeping, but seeks to make feminine 

 knowledge and its application more thorough and efficient. 



A tender spirit was shown in the thought of Mrs. Wilham 

 G. Choate to establish in New York a place where woman's 

 work might be sold with profit to herself, and in such manner 

 as not to wound the sensibihties of refined gentlewomen v/ho 

 had unexpectedly been thrown upon their own resources for a 

 living. Mrs. Choate opened the Woman's Exchange in 1878, 

 with thirty poorly made articles for sale ; society women rallied 

 to her assistance and the exchange throve under their admin- 

 istration. Women were taught how to bring all their work up 

 to a standard as near perfection as possible, and through the 

 medium of the exchange, hundreds of homes have been pre- 

 served and thousands have found a livelihood in sweet, se- 

 questered ways. Invalids know where they may buy the 

 purest dehcacies; housekeepers patronize the delicious, home 

 made preserves, confections and the hke; while grocers and the 

 art departments of large stores ahke demand the products of 

 the busy fingers that work behind the veil of the exchange, 

 which is not, and was never meant to be, self supportmg at the 

 expense of its beneficiaries. Sixty similar institutions in the 

 United States foster a spirit of independence in thousands of 

 women, and aid the Indians of Alaska, the Acadians of Louis- 

 iana, and the peasantry of far off Russia, by sales of their 

 handiwork in baskets, Attakapas cloth, and Russian lace, 

 metal and wood work. 



Few things show the far reaching influence of these ex- 

 changes for women better than the fact that besides all Ameri- 



