CONDENSED MILK 413 



going downhill, the farmer skimming little more than 

 a bare living though he obtains an excessive return on 

 the nominal capital he has put into the business. 

 These men got their farms at a trifling rent during 

 the depression, when tenants were scarce and the land- 

 lord in despair accepted and in many cases almost 

 bribed some of the little men to undertake a larger 

 venture. The tenants would be better off now if the 

 landlord would resume the greater part of the holding 

 and make a second farm of it, additional tenants would 

 not be lacking if the owner would risk more capital 

 in erecting a further set of buildings. 



We finished up the day in Ashbourne itself, looking 

 at a milk factory that is just being erected by one of 

 the great international firms producing condensed milk. 

 The factory is meant to deal with twenty to thirty 

 thousand gallons of milk a day during the season, all of 

 which is to be bought from the farmers round about, 

 who will deliver daily. It will form a valuable new 

 outlet for the farmers of the district, competing as it 

 will with the cheese makers and the wholesale milk 

 dealers in Manchester, to whom much of the present 

 production is consigned. Going over the factory, what 

 struck us most forcibly was the contrast between the 

 intensive use of science, the refined labour-saving 

 machinery, and the minute yet broad-minded organiza- 

 tion that was being put into the industry of condensing, 

 while the production of the milk itself, upon which the 

 whole business depended, still remains primitive and 

 uncombined, deriving no help from modern knowledge 

 or modern methods. 



