A fourth economic difficulty is the fact that the exchange has no capital. It does simply a commission business, and it is a recipient of whatever goods are sent it which reach a certain standard; its attitude is therefore negative rather than positive. Its consigners are obliged to purchase their own materials in small quantities in retail markets, and therefore to place a higher price on their articles than would be the case could the materials be purchased by or through a central office. This lack of capital and its passive attitude prevent the exchange from keeping its finger on the pulse of the market; there is no connection between supply and demand, and no way of establishing such connection. This difficulty, which is encountered in all business enterprises, is multiplied by the number of the consigners. The exchange refuses to accept articles if they do not reach a fixed standard, but not because the market is glutted. The loss accruing from an overstocked market, it is true, falls immediately on the consigners rather than on the exchange, but the exchange suffers directly through the loss of the commission retained on all goods sold, and indirectly in acquiring the reputation as a business house of keeping in stock articles not in demand and of failing to supply the market with others that are. The exchange as a business enterprise is also open to other criticisms. It is not self-supporting, and therefore gives a partial support to women who have come into competition with women not receiving the assistance of the exchange. The well-meant charity is thus instrumental in keeping at a low rate the earnings of women who do not receive such partial support. Many women are too much the victims of prejudice and false pride to come out openly as wage-earners, and to these the exchange gives its assistance, to the disadvantage of those who struggle on unaided by it. It has employed “gentlewomen” in its salaried positions, and by this restriction practically carried out, though not embodied in its rules, it has deprived itself of the services of some who would have been of valuable assistance through the business experience and executive ability they could have brought to bear on this work. It has required that all its consigners shall be known by number and not by name, thus allying itself, as regards one custom, with penal and reformatory institutions. The exchange by its limitations has encouraged the idea that women can work by stealth without being guilty of moral cowardice, and it has fostered the spirit that carries lunches in music-rolls, calls for laundry-work only after dark, and does not receive as boarders or lodgers wage-earning women. It has countenanced a fictitious social aristocracy by referring so uniformly to its consigners as “needy gentlewomen.” It has said in effect, “work for remuneration is honorable for all men; work for remuneration is honorable for women only when necessity compels it.”