BUREAU OF MARKETS. 469 



COTTON WAREHOUSING INVESTIGATIONS. 



Cotton warehousing investigations have been continued under the 

 direction of Mr. R. L. Nixon, following mainly the sam6 lines pursued 

 in the past. 



Information has been secured from many cotton warehouses in 

 addition to those previously listed, regarding capacity, manner, and 

 cost of construction, insurance rates, storage charges and loans, and 

 interest rates on stored cotton. 



Exhaustive tests have been made, in cooperation with the project 

 "Cotton handling and marketing," to determine the practicability of 

 grading cotton by samples secured at the cotton gin. Tests also have 

 been conducted in cooperation with the same project to determine the 

 extent to which cotton is damaged when exposed to the weather, the 

 purpose of these tests being to demonstrate the economic importance 

 of warehousing. 



Information on the subject of cotton warehouse operation and man- 

 agement has been compiled and will be available for publication 

 within a short time. 



Studies of State warehouse laws have been continued, and confer- 

 ences have been held with State officials regarding proposed ware- 

 house laws. 



INVESTIGATION AND DEMONSTRATION OF COTTON STANDARDS. 



This work is supervised by Mr. Fred Taylor, and during the past 

 year has dealt mainly with questions relating to the establishment, of 

 standards for Arizona Egyptian cotton and Sea Island cotton and 

 standards for length of staple. During the year 1917-18 extensive 

 investigational work was done in Arizona and California to determine 

 the suitability of tentative standards which had been established for 

 Arizona Egyptian cotton. 



In December, 1918, representatives of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture were sent to Savannah, Ga., to class 15,000 bales of Sea island 

 cotton, purchased by the Signal Corps, for the manufacture of air- 



f>lane fabric. This work necessitated the preparation of standards 

 or Sea Island cotton, and a tentative set was submitted to the 

 Savannah Cotton Echange for examination. It was approved by a 

 representative committee of exchange members, and standards cover- 

 ing five grades were then prepared for Georgia and Florida Sea Island 

 cotton. When these standards have been officially promulgated they 

 will be distributed for use during the season of 1918-19. 



Representatives from the department have made surveys in the 

 New England and Southern States, interviewing cotton manufac- 

 turers, merchants, and brokers, to obtain their opinion regarding the 

 practicability of formulating standards for cotton of various staple 

 lengths. It was found that 69 per cent of the cotton trade desired 

 the establishment of such standards by the department. Most of 

 those interviewed furnished types representing their idea of various 

 staple lengths. Careful examination of these types, under uniform 

 humidity and temperature conditions, indicated that the opinion of 

 the trade harmonized very closely with that of the dopartmcnt in this 

 respect. 



It is now planned to promulgate and distribute, in time for use in 

 classing the 1918 crop, types representing American Egyptian cotton 



