Houston Cotton Exchange

From its earliest years, Houston served as a collection, marketing, and transshipment center for cotton grown in the hinterland around it. In 1874 a group of the city's businessmen decided that the volume of cotton traffic passing through Houston, as well as the increasing complexity of trading it on a rational and uniform basis, required the establishment of a central, regulatory exchange. That year the Board of Trade and Cotton Exchange--later renamed the Houston Cotton Exchange and Board of Trade--was founded. It became the place, wrote one observer, "where King Cotton holds court in Houston."

Stimulated by its cotton trade, which was the second largest in the world by 1900, a network of support facilities was built in Houston to maximize both efficiency and profits. These included a modern port with state-of-the-art warves and fittings, a connecting canal to the Gulf Coast, and early railroad and telegraph service. In a retrospective survey of the historical role of cotton and the Cotton Exchange, the Houston Chronicle concluded that "no other organization has done more to build Houston's commerce and industry, stabilize its economy, develop its port, or furnish its civic leadership than the Houston Cotton Exchange. Cotton forced the building of transportation and handling facilities, and played a major part in the success of banks and other businesses and industries. Cotton money built Houston. Every phase of its life has been guided by the members of the Cotton Exchange."