When Progress Melts Jobs: The Ice Trade and the Future of Work

We often say “hindsight is 20/20,” but history can do more than explain the past-it can guide us toward smarter policy choices today. To see how, let’s travel back to 19th-century America and revisit a now-forgotten industry: the ice trade.

In the 19th century, the US harvested a lot of ice from streams and ponds. Some of it was consumed domestically and some was shipped it all over the world, including to England, Australia, India, China, and South America. Before the invention of ice makers and refrigeration, harvested ice was a valuable commodity, used for food preservation, production of ice cream, and making cold drinks in the summer. During the course of the 19th century, harvested ice consumption increased dramatically, both in the US and overseas. Artificial lakes were constructed to increase supply. Legal battles over who had rights to harvest ice from a pond with multiple owners emerged. At one point, the US ice industry employed an estimated 90,000 people, harvested millions of tons of ice per year, and exported hundreds of thousand tons.

You can guess what happened next. Artificial ice, invented in the mid-19th century, was initially expensive and often seen as lower quality. But over time, it became more affordable, consistent, and convenient-eventually displacing natural ice entirely. Later, the spread of electric refrigeration sealed the fate of both artificial and natural ice delivery services. Between World War I and World War II, the international ice trade disappeared, as did ice harvesting in most places that had access to electricity.

This brings us to the core policy question: how should we respond when innovation makes entire occupations disappear? Let’s consider the plight of the ice harvester or a small pond owner at that time. Obviously their incomes and job prospects were hurt by these new developments. Another set of victims were saw mills that produced sawdust to keep the harvested ice from melting during transport.

Now imagine if someone came in and said, “We need to help these people save their livelihoods. Let’s outlaw artificial ice or tax it.” That would have helped the ice harvesters and saw-millers prolong their doomed careers but at the cost of efficiency and technological progress. It would have been a little bit like paying people to dig holes and then fill them up again-creating jobs but not particularly useful ones.

What should we have done instead? We could have provided training subsidies to ice harvesters to help them acquire new skills and find new jobs, boosting their human capital. Or we could have offered lump-sum transfers based on expected earnings losses, letting workers decide how best to adapt.

Of course, policies like retraining subsidies or lump-sum transfers are often harder to implement than protectionist measures-not because they’re less effective, but because they’re less visible and emotionally resonant. Banning imports or taxing new technologies creates an obvious “win” for the affected workers, even if it harms consumers and the broader economy. But just because protectionism is politically easier doesn’t mean it’s the better path forward.

Ultimately, trying to stop beneficial progress hurts more than it helps. Instead, we should focus on helping people adjust so they can thrive in the world that’s coming, not the one that’s gone.

Originally published at https://mytwocentsandcounting.substack.com.