The capital invested in carrying on this business is not less than twenty-eight million dollars. Employment, constant and temporary, is afforded by the ice trade to about ninety thousand persons and twenty-five thousand horses.
It is probable that more than half of the world’s annual ice supply is procured and consumed in this country, which is the home of this industry.
The Preserving or Antiseptic Powers of Ice have long been made use of to keep food from decay. The best illustration of its powers in this direction is found in the accounts which travelers in Northern Europe and Asia have given us of the discoveries of huge mammoths frozen within large blocks of ice. This species of animal has been extinct for ages, and so perfectly have they been preserved that some of the native tribes occasionally make use of these supplies of flesh for food. Fish, meat and eggs are now frozen and kept during many months, and the transportation of fresh beef and mutton for thousands of miles over land and sea is an established custom. Fresh fish are frozen in the center of cakes of ice, and, shipped in this way, present a very handsome appearance.
This property of ice for domestic and commercial purposes has been of an incalculable benefit to the human family. Many eminent physicians have laid the seal of their approval upon the use of ice as a remedial agent, and also for the alleviation of suffering among the sick. So highly did they esteem it that, prior to the general introduction of the trade in ice, many doctors and managers of hospitals had private stores of ice for use among their patients. The directors of the Pennsylvania hospital at Philadelphia may be credited with being the pioneer ice dealers of that city, as in the early years of the century they disposed of their surplus stores of ice by sale in that community. Many localities which are now important centers in the ice trade were at one time dependent upon the medical fraternity for ice for hygienic purposes.
Pen Picture of a Modern Ice Harvest. (See [Frontispiece].)—Viewed from an eminence on the shore, a pretty and engaging scene is often presented at an ice house in the country, during the harvest. The clear sunlight flooding the quiet landscape discloses here and there a snug farmhouse sheltered among the hills, and surrounded with trees and shrubs, rivaling, in their soft downy draperies of spotless white and brilliant pearls, their vernal beauty when joyous spring has clothed their boughs with fragrant blossoms and emerald leaves. The broad stream or lake, ice-locked and still, stretches away to the distance, a level and unbroken plain; its farther shore dwindling away until lost to view, presents a delicately traced outline of forest and field against the horizon. The near by shore stands out clear cut and bold of outline, but quiet and deserted. Nothing in the aspect of nature denotes activity or invites the attack of man by a display of treasure.
Stepping to the brink of the hill near the shore, a new scene breaks upon the view. At the foot of the hill stands a huge ice house, its shore side serried with galleries along the entire front, with inclined ways extending from the water to the top of the house, and a connecting bridge or runway between each gallery and the incline. Alongside of the incline is discovered a power-house and tool-room, and at a little distance large barns and dwellings. From the foot of the incline leading out into the lake is seen a dark line, which branches out and becomes a large blot on the clear white surface. A closer inspection reveals an animated scene, of men armed with strange weapons attacking, with great vigor, fields of ice, which they detach from the main surface, and on which they navigate the open water, already stripped of its frozen crystals. All around are seen teams and horses drawing huge loads of snow to the distant shores, plows and markers, crossing and recrossing the cleared surface, and long lines of ice blocks, which are being floated along the channels to the incline, where the puffing engine imparts motion to swiftly gliding, endless chains, which catch up the waiting cakes and whisk them away up the incline and into the ice house, looking as though they were endowed with life-motion and were traveling of their own volition.
CHAPTER II.
Legal and Sanitary Matters.
Ice Privileges and Legal Points—Artificial Ice Ponds and Sanitary Care of Ice Ponds and Fields.
Attention is now being given to the sanitary condition of the sources from whence supplies of natural ice are obtained. Ice sold for domestic uses and cut from canal water, must, in New York, be so labeled.