COTTON PRICES AND MARKETS 
9 
Exports are used as a measure of foreign demand. These figures 
do not time with mill takings, because foreign merchants import 
large quantities of cotton and carry it by hedging. This is illustrated 
by Figure 1. 
"Mill consumption is used as an indication of demand for goods 
and as one item in arriving at remaining supplies. Mill consump- 
tion figures are published monthly for the United States by the 
Bureau of the Census. The only world consumption figures are 
those published semiannually by the International Federation of 
Master Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Associations, Man- 
chester, which publishes also the number of active spindles. The 
EXPORTS AND FOREIGN MILL TAKINGS OP AMERICAN COTTON 
PERCENTAGES OF ANNUAL TOTAL 
Four-Week Periods. Aug. I. 1912- July 31. 1914 and Aug. 1. 1921-July 31. 1923 
I9I2-'I3 
1913-Ht 
I92K22 
l922-'23 
Fig. 1. — Each four-week period is shown as a percentage of the year's total. The export 
figures used are those compiled by the Department of Agriculture from Government and 
commercial reports and issued weekly in Crops and Markets. The foreign mill takings 
of American cotton are from the weekly reports of the New York Cotton Exchange 
market does not wait for these figures to gauge demand. Reports of 
individual mill activities such as the amount of curtailment, if any, 
and the number of idle spindles, are used to forecast the census 
figures. 
Cloth sales of mills, commission merchants, jobbers, and retailers 
are considered good indicators of demand. Weekly reports of Fall 
River print-cloth sales are important figures of sales at mill points. 
Some of the large dry-goods jobbers publish their weekly sales, which 
furnish some ground for estimating demand at jobbing centers. 
The parity between the prices of cloth and yarn and of the raw 
cotton shown in Figure 2 is an index of the trend of demand. 
SUPPLY OF COTTON 
The world's supply of cotton for price-making purposes consists 
of cotton already in existence, or spots, and cotton in prospect. The 
6103°— 26 — —2 
