How best to perform construction work and what it will cost for materials, labor, plant and general expenses are matters of vital interest to engineers and contractors. This book is a treatise on the methods and cost of concrete construction. No attempt has been made to present the subject of cement testing which is already covered by Mr. W. Purves Taylor's excellent book, nor to discuss the physical properties of cements and concrete, as they are discussed by Falk and by Sabin, nor to consider reinforced concrete design as do Turneaure and Maurer or Buel and Hill, nor to present a general treatise on cements, mortars and concrete construction like that of Reid or of Taylor and Thompson. On the contrary, the authors have handled the subject of concrete construction solely from the viewpoint of the builder of concrete structures. By doing this they have been able to crowd a great amount of detailed information on methods and costs of concrete construction into a volume of moderate size.

Though the special information contained in the book is of most particular assistance to the contractor or engineer engaged in the actual work of making and placing concrete, it is believed that it will also prove highly useful to the designing engineer and to the architect. It seems plain that no designer of concrete structures can be a really good designer without having a profound knowledge of methods of construction and of detailed costs. This book, it is believed, gives these methods and cost data in greater number and more thoroughly analyzed than they can be found elsewhere in engineering literature.

The costs and other facts contained in the book have been collected from a multitude of sources, from the engineering journals, from the transactions of the engineering societies, from Government Reports and from the personal records of the authors and of other engineers and contractors. It is but fair to say that the great bulk of the matter contained in the book, though portions of it have appeared previously in other forms in the authors' contributions to the technical press, was collected and worked up originally by the authors. Where this has not been the case the original data have been added to and re-analyzed by the authors. Under these circumstances it has been impracticable to give specific credit in the pages of the book to every source from which the authors have drawn aid. They wish here to acknowledge, therefore, the help secured from many engineers and contractors, from the volumes of Engineering News, Engineering Record and Engineering-Contracting, and from the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the proceedings and papers of various other civil engineering societies and organizations of concrete workers. The work done by these journals and societies in gathering and publishing information on concrete construction is of great and enduring value and deserves full acknowledgment.

In answer to any possible inquiry as to the relative parts of the work done by the two authors in preparing this book, they will answer that it has been truly the labor of both in every part.

H. P. G.
C. S. H.

Chicago, Ill., April 15, 1908.