The following paper was read by Mr. William Roberts, of Trenton, N. J., at the Fifth Annual Convention of the Na tional Brick Manufacturers' Association, Thursday, January 22, 1891. The paper is entitled, " Press Brick : Their Manufacture and Use." "I hardly think it necessary for me to go into a lengthy de scription of pressed brick or their manufacture or use in the past, as that will not concern the members of this Association so much as a general discussion and interchange of ideas and views upon matters appertaining to their manufacture in the present and for the future. Of course, we shall take our expe rience of the past as a foundation for our present ideas.
" The term pressed brick was originally meant to apply to a brick that should be first moulded and then re-pressed, as that has been the customary way of producing brick heretofore spe cified or looked upon as pressed brick. But of late years there has been manufactured throughout a large section of the coun try a large number of brick that of course might be termed pressed brick. For instance, all the brick that are made with what are called dry-clay brick machines are certainly pressed brick, as they are pressed into shape by the same kind of a pro cess as are our regular pressed brick. The only difference in their manufacture is that in making brick with dry-clay ma chines, the brick are pressed into form direct from the raw material, while what we have always heretofore termed in the east as a pressed brick have in all cases been moulded into the form of a brick before going through the process of re-pressing, and this is the kind of a brick that we shall particularly allude to in the reading of this paper.
" About the first pressed brick that we know of as having been made in the east for the general trade in any large num bers were in the cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore ; in fact, we do not think that previous to twenty-five years ago there was any place that manufactured pressed brick outside of those two cities, that is, for shipping to the general trade. Of course,
there were some few pressed brick made in a small way in other places for local consumption. About a quarter of a cen tury ago the brick manufacturers of the city of Trenton, N. J., commenced to manufacture a few pressed brick for the New York market, and they have been steadily increasing their out put up to the present time. In the year of 1870 the city of Trenton produced about 1,500,000 of regular pressed brick. But at the present time we produce annually about 20,000,000 of pressed brick, all of them being made in the regular way, by first being moulded by hand one at a time, and then re-pressed with hand presses.
" We have no statistics showing how many pressed brick are made in other cities, but from the best information that we have been able to obtain, we judge that the city of Trenton is about the second city in the number made annually of this particular class of brick, the city of Philadelphia being first and Baltimore third.
As far as brickmaking is concerned, we think that the city of Trenton is what might be called a pressed-brick city, for the reason that a specialty is made of that class of brick by all the yards carrying on business there (60 per cent. of all the brick manufactured in the city of Trenton are pressed brick), which we think is the largest percentage of this class of brick made in any one city in the United States.
" We shall now endeavor to give you some of our ideas on the making of pressed brick, ideas which we have gained through a practical experience in their manufacture, and will cheerfully invite any discussion on the matter.