ICE-TRADE

ICE-TRADE. It is only within the last five and twenty years that the ice-trade has become so important, and every year it is rapidly increasing. Ice was used as an article of export for the first time in 1806 by Mr Tudor of Boston, the persevering originator of the trade. For a quarter of a century he continued to devote his attention to the trade; and, after numerous misfortunes, he has established it as one of the most lucrative and promising in the United

States. The following table will show how rapidly the Icebergs trade has arisen. It refers to the exports from Boston alone:

The quantity thus stored was distributed as follows:—

The small quantity shipped for Britain is owing to competitors nearer hand, viz., from Norway, perhaps the only other country which carries on an ice trade.

The amount stored up in New York during 1855, was 305,000 tons, of which 20,000 were for exportation.

The process of cutting and storing up the ice may be thus described:—During the time that the ice is forming in December and January, it is kept as free of snow as possible. Occasionally holes are pierced in the forming ice, to enable the water to overflow, as thus the formation of ice is accelerated. Before cutting the ice, its surface is systematically cleared of snow with wooden scrapers. An iron scraper then removes the snow-ice, and the field is ready for being marked off into squares of about 5 feet each by an iron plough. Next follow the cutters in the tracks marked off by the preceding instrument, cutter, plough, and scrapers being each drawn by a horse. By hand-saws the square pieces are now disengaged, and are ready for being floated to the shore. Thence they may be carted to ice-houses;—400 tons can be cut and stowed away by forty men and twelve horses in a single day. The wooden store-house of the Wenham Lake Company has room for 20,000 tons of ice. Steam has been applied for the purpose of elevating, lowering, and stowing away the ice. The ice thus stored is to be taken to all parts of the world, to be used for cooling wines and all kinds of beverages, preserving meat, in ice-creams, confections, &c.

The ice-trade is highly important in opening up an extensive field of labour for the working classes at a period of the year when all ordinary avocations are suspended, and during which poverty entails distress. About 2500 persons are employed in the Boston district alone, and throughout the States of the Union, about 9000. The cost of transit by railway in the Boston trade is estimated at nearly £20,000, and by sea at about £100,000. The number of vessels employed was 520. The value of the ice farms of New York and Massachusetts is considered equal to that of the rice crop of Georgia. The whole capital invested in the trade is about a million and a half sterling. (Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, for August 1855; Knight's Industry of all Nations, &c.)