CHAPTERS ON THE CEMENT INDUSTRY 857 



A report by Mr W. W. Maclay, dated Ap. 28, 1892, gives the 

 tensile strength obtained as 



AVERAGB 



Neat, 7 days 649 lb 



Mortar (1:2), 7 days 245 " 



Mortar (1:2), 28 days 418 " 



The works at Montezuma were entirely destroyed by fire in 

 June 1893, and have never been rebuilt. The plant is of par- 

 ticular interest because of the advanced technologic methods there 

 employed. It was the first American plant in which wet raw 

 materials were fed, without drying or briquetting, directly into 

 rotary kilns. 



In following out the history of the above plants, which bore a 

 certain relationship either in locality or management to each 

 other, we have overlapped, in point of date, the beginning of 

 the present system of New York cement plants. Commencing 

 with dome kiln plants in the Hudson valley, we have traced the 

 development in New York of the rotary kiln, and have seen how 

 successful from a purely technologic point of view these pio- 

 neers in the industry were. The destruction by fire of the South 

 Pondout and Montezuma plants, however, terminated the con- 

 nection of these early experimenters with New York's cement 

 industry, and the early history of that industry may be said to 

 end in 1893. As early as 1886, another Portland plant had been 

 erected, but this plant was managed by an Englishman, and the 

 problem was attacked in an entirely different manner. The 

 earlier plants had been aggressively original and American; the 

 plant at Warners, with its dome kilns and wet mixing, was ultra- 

 English. And till within the past year, the typical New York 

 plant 1 has been one using marl and clay; mixing wet, briquetting 

 and drying; and burning in dome kilns. The Warners Portland 

 cement co. did indeed erect a rotary kiln plant near Warners, 



l There was, in fact, but one exception to this rule. The Glens Falls Port- 

 land cement co. at Glens Fails, Warren co., has operated Schofcr kilns since 

 1894 on limestone and clay. 



