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18 BULLETIN 1392--U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
The exchange 1s a nonstock, nonprofit, unincorporated association. 
It has neither constitution nor by-laws, the agreement drawn up and 
entered into by the member organizations being the only official 
document authorizing its existence and explaining its relationship 
to the member associations. ‘The cost of maintaining it is prorated 
among the member associations on the basis of the gross proceeds 
from the sale of cotton delivered each season, regardless of whether 
the cotton is actually sold by the associations’ own sales department 
or by the general sales office of the exchange. ‘This cost has amounted 
annually to approximately 30 cents per bale. 
The exchange is governed by a board of trustees consisting of three 
members from each State association. ‘They are chosen annually, 
and meet several times during the year. Immediate direction of its 
operations is delegated to an executive committee, composed of one 
man from each member association, usually the president or general 
manager. ‘This committee ordinarily meets once a month. The | 
officers are a president, a vice president, a secretary-treasurer, and 
general manager. Headquarters were first established at Dallas, 
Tex., with the general sales office at Atlanta, but in July, 1924, the 
two offices were consolidated and moved to Memphis, Tenn. Figure 
3 shows the plan of organization and control. 
At the time the exchange was formed it was contemplated that 12 
departments would be organized, as follows: (1) Executive and 
administrative, (2) office management, (83) grading and standardiz- 
ing, (4) warehousing, (5) insurance, (6) transportation, (7) finance, 
(8) statistics, (9) sales of ordinary cotton, domestic and foreign, 
(10) sales of staple cotton, domestic and foreign, (11) legal, and 
(12) field service. Two departments were organized, and they func- 
tioned the first year—the legal and the field service. Departments 
now organized and functioning are legal, sales, systems, traffic, and 
field service and public relations. Some of its activities are handled 
by committees, such as the finance committee, which made arrange- 
ments in one instance for a line of credit with eastern bankers for 
loans to member organizations of $100,000,000. 
In addition to its general sales office at Memphis, the exchange 
maintains its own selling offices at Boston, Fall River, New Bed- 
ford, and Providence, in New England; Charlotte, Greensboro, and 
Greenville, in the Carolinas; and at Barcelona, Spain; Bremen, 
Germany; Havre, France; Liverpool, England; and Kobe, Japan. 
It has brokerage connections in other important markets. It does not 
practice pooling, but sells on individual account for each member 
association, to which it furnishes as a part of its service statistical 
information and advice on cotton-market conditions. Although each 
association has its own sales department and several of them have 
their individual sales offices and representatives in domestic market 
centers, the general sales office supplements their individual activities 
in domestic markets and handles a large part of the export sales. 
Figure 4 shows a shipment of type samples to its foreign offices. 
In the several years of its operations the exchange has sold over 
one-fourth of the cotton handled by its member associations. In the 
1922-23 season it sold 140,748 bales; in 1923-24, 257,713 bales; and 
in 1924-25, 315,058? bales. Of this quantity about one-half was 
2To June 25, 1925, 
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