Multiple Choice, Single Answer
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Before mechanical refrigeration, the ice trade supplied cities with cooling through an elaborate seasonal harvest. Workers cut blocks from frozen lakes and rivers in winter, then packed them in sawdust inside insulated warehouses so they would survive months of storage and shipping. By the mid-1800s, ships carried New England ice as far as India and the Caribbean, though a large fraction melted before arrival. The trade collapsed not because demand fell, but because artificial ice-making machines, first used commercially in the 1870s, produced a reliable supply unaffected by mild winters. A poor harvest year could once bankrupt an ice merchant; mechanical production ended that vulnerability entirely.