But still more it has opened up to women what has been practically a new occupation. Domestic work within the house performed by members of the family without fixed compensation and by those not members of the family with compensation had been the previous rule. The Exchange has shown that it is possible for the women of a family to prepare within the house for sale outside many articles for table consumption, both those of necessity and luxury. Innumerable instances are on record of women who within the past fifteen years have supported themselves wholly or in part by making for general sale or on orders different articles for the table.[307] It seems inevitable that eventually all articles of food will be prepared out of the house except those requiring the last application of heat, and that scientific skill will reduce to a minimum the labor and expense of this final stage of preparation. This change is in direct line with the tendency towards specialization everywhere else found in that it thus becomes possible for every person to do exclusively that thing which he or she can do best; it allows the concentration of labor and capital and thus by economizing both secures the largest results; it permits many women to retain their home life and at the same time engage in remunerative business; it improves the quality of all articles consumed, since they are produced under the most favorable conditions; it brings the work of every cook into competition with the work of every other cook by providing a standard of measurement now lacking and thus inciting improvement; it is the application of the principle of unconscious co-operation and therefore in harmony with other business activities. More definitely, as one illustration, it permits all fruits to be canned, pickled, and preserved in every way in the locality where they are produced at a cost ultimately less than can now be done when fruit is shipped to cities and there sold at prices including high rents; it prevents a glut in the market of such perishable articles by providing for their preservation on farms and in villages and subsequent transportation to cities at leisure; it makes it possible to utilize many abandoned farms in the East which could be used as fruit farms but are too remote from shipping centres to permit the transportation of ripe fruit; it ultimately lightens the labors of many women on farms by enabling them to purchase in cities many articles now produced by them at a disadvantage. The canning in cities, by individual families, of fruits, often in an over-ripe condition, is as anomalous as would be to-day the making of dairy products in city homes. The preservation of fruit is but one example of articles that could be prepared better and more cheaply in the country than in the city. Miscellaneous articles of every description, as plum-pudding, boned turkey, chicken broth, jelly, croquettes and salad, minced meat, pressed veal, bouillon, calf’s-foot