44 WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE 



other sources where the conditions as to production 

 are more lenient. This principle has been recognized 

 in Denmark, and a slightly higher price than 

 market value is paid by the Copenhagen factory. 

 In England even more than this is necessary that 

 is to say, the price paid must be sufficiently 

 higher to induce farmers to give up their present 

 contracts i.e., exchange a paying certainty for a 

 possible improvement. For the factory at Northal- 

 lerton and all other such undertakings at present are 

 experiments ; and a farmer has no inducement to 

 put his faith in experiments when he is doing well 

 enough with companies (in spite of the middleman) 

 who have their connections already firmly estab- 

 lished. In Denmark the farmer was not doing 

 well, so he was glad to try anything new. He had 

 nothing to lose. 



In contrasting the methods of starting this 

 factory with those which would obtain in Denmark, 

 it struck me as being a good example of our 

 tendency to overcapitalize our experiments (I use 

 the word experiments advisedly, in contradistinc- 

 tion to undertakings). Compared with the Danes, 

 we put too much expensive permanency into the 

 initial construction of buildings, plants, etc., before 

 ascertaining by experience how the concern is 

 likely to work, and what as subsequent experience 

 only can show are to be the best lines for running 

 it. I believe, if the Danes had been undertaking 

 the management of the Northallerton Milk Factory, 

 that they would have started it in a wooden shed 



