Excerpt from The Concrete Review: German Methods in Portland Cement Manufacture, Dry and Wet ProcessesIt would certainly be wrong to assume that the regulation of prices is done arbitrarily for the sole object of getting the highest possible prices. The principal merit of the syndicates is that they balance the production of the factories with the sale of the cement. The syndicate in Rheinland and Westphalia operated its factories last year 57 per cent. Of their producing capacity, and the South German syndicate 78 per cent.The syndicates in the different districts of Germany are connected by agreements, which determine how far each factory can sell in its environs.Raw material for Portland cement is found pretty nearly all over Germany, principally limestone with shale, and it frequently has naturally the proper combination for Portland cement. Such de posits you will find in south Germany, principally in Wurttemberg, in the Swabian J ura, around Hannover and also on the Rhine. Some factories, principally in central Germany, use limestone with clay, which is mostly very damp. The cement works on the northern coast around Hamburg and Stettin use wet chalk and clay as raw material and work on the wet process.Such pure limestone as is used for cement-making in many places in America is not met with in Germany. On this account white Portland cement is not made in Germany on a large scale.The quarry of a German cement factory presents quite a different aspect from an American one. The steam-shovel, which is found here in almost every cement factory, is not yet used in Germany, as the factories are mostly so small that the purchase of a steam shovel would not pay. Where the lime stratum, as in Westphalia, is only 20 feet thick, the stone is loosened by hand and shoveled into the cars. Only small tip-cars containing about 1 square yard are used, and they are hauled direct into the factory by means of a wire rope-way. You will find nowhere in Germany such large locomotives as are customary here in many places. The wire rope-way and the suspended rail are preferred, as by them smaller quantities of raw material are regularly transported to the factory at quite even inter vals, and can then be tipped direct into the crusher without any interruption.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.