Cutting and hauling natural ice · Ceded (since 1914)

Plant ice output in the United States passes the natural harvest for the first time, twenty-six million tons against twenty-four million.

Cutting ice was winter work with a horse-drawn plough, saws, tongs and a chute into an insulated house packed with sawdust, and Frederic Tudor had built a trade on it that reached Calcutta and Hong Kong. The compression machine won for reasons beyond output, since plant ice was clean and the ponds near cities were not, and the natural trade collapsed after the First World War. Domestic refrigerators finished the remaining demand in American homes through the 1930s and in European ones in the 1950s. Ice is still cut by hand in a few places for cold storage without electricity and as heritage demonstration, and the human work around cold is now maintenance, refrigerant handling and the judgment of a cold chain.