Cotton Futures Act

The Cotton Futures Act of 1914 authorized the United States Department of Agriculture to establish physical standards as a means of determining color grade, staple length and strength, and other qualities and properties for cotton. It was intended to minimize speculative manipulation of the cotton market.

The Act was rendered unconstitutional in Federal district court because the Act originated in the Senate. As a revenue act, it should have been drafted in the House. It was replaced by the Cotton Futures Act of 1916.


Famous quotes containing the words cotton, futures and/or act:

    We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, will often peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
    Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
    But with a little act upon the blood
    Burn like the mines of sulphur.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)