NOTES ON THE RHINELAND CHEMICAL WORKS. 
correctly, are paying their pre-war labour force, whilst their actual 
output is in some cases as low as 10 per cent. of the possible, cannot 
be determined; it may be assumed that, with fuller employment present 
conditions will be modified, but one cannot help feeling that the old 
conditions will not return, and that the difficulties surrounding present- 
day labour problems are not to be confined to Britain alone. 
In speaking of output, however, some notice must be taken of the 
present condition of the German factories, and especially of the changes 
which have taken place in them during the long period of war. AJl 
of the factories having facilities for the manufacture of materials for 
explosives or gas warfare have greatly increased their plants during 
this time. It is quite evident, also, that these additions have been 
made in no haphazard fashion, but that full consideration has been 
given to the possibility of using these essentially war additions to the 
buildings and plant for industrial purposes when the war demand had 
ceased. 
_ In general, and in the case of the large plants certainly so, it has 
been left to the factory control to provide for the increased output 
by such means as they chose to adopt, the Government affording every 
facility in the matter of materials and labour, and, it is stated, also 
providing the money required for the erection of the plant. The system 
of financing these extensions has apparently been that of repaying 
from time to time the expenditure incurred, and cases are not wanting 
in which large new plants have been erected on Government behalf at 
a late period in the war, in which these repayments have not taken 
place, and firms are now in possession of very expensively erected 
buildings and equipment which they would not have built in normal 
circumstances. : 
There is a generally expressed fear that the abnormal cost arising 
-from the circumstances in which these extensions were carried out will 
not be met by the new Government, and that the factories will have 
to bear the major portion, if not the whole, of the charges thus incurred. 
This, of course, only applies to work carried out during a late period 
of the war, and many enlargements of plant have taken place which 
the erectors -have obtained on such terms that capital charges upon 
their peace output will not be excessive. Probably no better example 
of the permanent character of these hurried extensions is to be found 
than the Dormagen plant for the production of picric acid and TNT, 
belonging to the Bayer company, which is situated on the left bank 
of the Rhine and a little way removed from Leverkusen, which is on 
the opposite side of the river. The buildings, which were begun late 
in 1916, are all solidly constructed of brick and ferro-conerete, the 
sulphonating and nitrating houses following in detail the general plan 
which has been adopted as the standard for such work in the Bayer 
plants. Two units for the manufacture of picric acid were completed, 
each having a capacity of about 900 tons per month, and the first of 
these units was in operation within six months of the conimencement 
of erection. . 
The nature of the buildings and the substantial and finished character 
of the plant leave no doubt whatsoever that they are intended to he a 
permanent addition to the Bayer factories, and with very little altera- 
tion they can be converted into a large installation for the manufacture 
169 
