Excerpts from the report Summary: The purpose of this report is to outline to cotton warehousemen a few suggestions as to how more efficient methods for handling cotton may be devised or discovered, and to list and briefly discuss some broad principles of materials handling, which, when applied to the warehousing of cotton, should result in increasing handling efficiency and in reducing handling costs. Most inefficiencies in the handling of cotton result from one or more of the following reasons: (1) Failure to use suitable powered handling equipment in place of manual labor; (2) failure to make proper and effective use of such equipment when it is employed; and (3) failure to make effective use of the manual labor employed. To eliminate or reduce such inefficiencies it is necessary to examine handling operations with a view toward finding out how the inefficiencies came about, in order to remove the sources of trouble.