The advantage that has been taken of this new idea is widespread. The sixteen thousand consigners on the books of the exchange are but a part of the still larger number of women who are turning to practical advantage their tastes for sewing and cooking in all of their various forms. Before the opening of the exchange, as still, indeed, women seeking remunerative employment were forced to go into one of the four great occupations open to women--work in factories, teaching, domestic service, and work in shops. But it has been impossible for all women desiring occupation to find it in these four great classes of employment. Many desire employment, but are forced to carry it on in their own homes; others have no taste whatever for any of the lines of work mentioned; and conditions under which many kinds of work are performed render other occupations obnoxious to others; still others prefer work which gives greater opportunity for the exercise of individual taste and ingenuity than do some of these occupations. Such women have found through the exchange a means of support and opportunity for work which they could not find elsewhere. They are learning that society is coming to respect more the woman who supports herself by making good bread, cakes, and preserves than the woman who teaches school indifferently, gives poor elocutionary performances, or becomes a mere mechanical contrivance in a shop or factory. They are finding that the stamp of approval is ultimately to be put on the way work is done rather than on the occupation itself. Thus it is that hundreds of women from Maine to Texas and California are obtaining for themselves and others partial or entire support by making and offering for sale, either through business houses or private orders, cake, bread, preserved fruit, salads, desserts, and an innumerable number of special articles, in addition to the products of artistic needle-work and decorative art-work. Not only are these articles found in the large cities, but in country villages many women are engaged in such work and often find a ready sale for it without the trouble and expense of sending it to the city markets. In one village of only five hundred inhabitants one young woman makes and sells daily thirty loaves of bread. In a small Eastern village another bakes and sells daily from thirty to a hundred loaves of bread according to the season, and cake and pastry in the same proportion.