July 15, 2001|By Kathleen W. Sander
IN THE TUMULTUOUS years following the Civil War, women in Baltimore -- like women everywhere -- often had to scramble to make ends meet. Aside from working 14-hour days in factories or doing piecework in sweatshops for $3 a week, there were few work options for wage-earning women who struggled to keep their families together.
To make matters worse, despite their financial vulnerability in the roller-coaster economy of the times, women faced formidable cultural obstacles when going "out to work." In Victorian America, it simply was not deemed proper for women to "co-mingle" with the opposite sex in the workplace.
The 19th-century workplace could be intimidating for women. One commentator warned that "many men make it their business to ruin females who are obliged to work for a living. The employers do it, the sporting men, the fast men and the accomplished villains. One factory owner has ruined three beautiful young women in two years."
Recognizing women's untenable work situation, in 1880 a group of activist Baltimore women, mostly Quaker, opened what would become one of Baltimore's most enduring -- and endearing -- organizations: the Woman's Industrial Exchange. Baltimore's Exchange has long stood as a symbol of the city's generosity and hospitality.
But as importantly, it represents a significant aspect of women's labor history that often is overlooked, a reminder of the restrictive society of a century ago, in which women had to create their own employment alternatives to escape perilous and demeaning work conditions in mainstream industry. It is a bricks-and-mortar, everyday testimony to the hardships and triumphs of women's efforts to survive in an often economically unjust society.
This summer, the 186-year-old Exchange building at the corner of Pleasant and North Charles streets is slated for major renovation. The four-story building, which was once a private home, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. In recent years, Baltimore's favorite "damsel" faced seemingly insurmountable financial troubles, not least of which included preserving the historic building that dates back to the presidency of James Madison in 1815. Its future seemed doubtful.
Two years ago, the Exchange's board of directors, led by president Linda C. Goldberg, initiated a fund-raising campaign -- the first since 1917 -- to save the Baltimore landmark. The effort met with great enthusiasm from loyal patrons and corporate and foundation friends alike. In May, the renovation team set out to preserve this important piece of Baltimore's history.
The women who started the Exchange 121 years ago -- women from old Baltimore families such as Hopkins, Garrett, Thomas, Tyson and Gilman, among others -- had a simple plan: to provide a fashionable retail shop where women in need of income could consign their home-produced items, such as needlework, cakes, pickles and preserves, for a profit, minus a small overhead fee.
They hoped to provide a place where women from all walks of life could "win for themselves that blessed independence" without venturing out into the public workplace. They also hoped to save destitute women from accepting charitable handouts -- a disgrace in the 19th century. "Alms are not offered," the Exchange managers often wrote.
Many of the Exchange's founders were involved with reform and educational activities, such as suffrage and temperance, as well as the founding of the Gilman and Bryn Mawr schools and Swarthmore College. Baltimore's Mary Elizabeth Garrett, the benefactor who started the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893, also helped to launch the Exchange.
Baltimore's Exchange developed as part of an economic movement of nearly 100 similar exchanges established across the country in the 19th century. The first exchange, the Philadelphia Ladies' Depository, opened in 1832 as an alternative to the harsh labor conditions women faced in the early years of industrialism, when economic depressions struck regularly every 10 to 15 years.
Women of Philadelphia's most aristocratic families -- the Biddles, Wistars and Whartons -- opened a one-room shop in the heart of the city where "decayed gentlewomen" who had fallen into all-too-frequent poverty could earn money by selling their merchandise.
Despite their elite status, the founders easily identified with their less fortunate peers: "Who can say in these difficult times," they wrote in their 1840 annual report, "when poverty follows so rapidly in the footsteps of wealth, that a similar lot will not be their own."
Because of the stigma attached to women's work, consignors would come anonymously and heavily veiled to the back door of the Philadelphia Exchange at night to drop off their needlework to be sold the next day.
