These figures demonstrate how thoroughly practical the scheme is of sending hand-made articles to special magazines to be disposed of for the makers’ benefit. The woman who, by sending her work to the exchange, got $35 for what she, as a wage-earner, had received $2.50 from the manufacturer, got the profit that had previously gone to swell the bank-account of the manufacturer, middle men, and retail dealers. This was the same with all contributors to the exchanges; by employing their own labor they accumulated the premiums which, under the old factory and store system, inured to the benefit of their employers. In establishing the woman’s exchanges, the difficulty was to secure enough women of intelligence to be their own employers and to interest enough women in woman’s work to become patrons of the exchanges instead of the stores. For instance, to meet the expenses of the Fifth Avenue establishment in 1888, the income from all sources was $13,589.56, while the expenses of carrying on the business amounted to $16,318.48. This left a deficit of $2723.92 that had to be met by donations, and which kept the institution on a partly charitable instead of wholly self-supporting basis. As this deficit had lessened with each year, some optimistic thinkers began to hope that the time was coming when it would disappear altogether, and thus allow them to become strictly co-operative instead of philanthropic concerns. A conclusion reached was, that were they once to become independent of charitable donations, they would branch out largely enough in most of the worst paid departments of woman’s work so as to force out those employed on such labor for the vast retail stores. But it was found that an insuperable obstacle to the extension of the exchanges lay in the utter lack of system with which contributors worked. In the matter of production, the regular stores had but little system; still some attempt was made in them to regulate the supply of manufactured goods to meet a possible or expected demand. Contributors to the exchanges had no such guide. Those who made and sent articles for sale could have no opportunity for knowing what others were making and sending. The result was that women living near or afar off in town and country worked completely in the dark. With no finger on the public pulse in the matter of supply and demand for goods, they were obliged for this haphazard work to purchase their own material in small quantities in the retail markets, while the merchant-manufacturers bought theirs in bulk in the cheapest. This could only mean more failures than successes in the disposal of goods made under such conditions. Again, only women possessed of some means could afford to lay out money for materials and wait the uncertain chances of its returning to them with a profit. In consequence, most of those contributing articles to the exchanges for sale were “reduced gentlewomen,” who made use of this means of becoming their own