The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-02-04
SOME COLD FACTS.
Three Weeks of This
Weather Will Make
Cheap Summer Ice.
STATE OF THE HARVEST NOW
The Day of the Frozen Klondike
Is Gone By-Situation on
River and Lake.
ATE Of THE HARVEST NOW

The present cold snap has precluded the
possibility of anything like a genuine ice
famine next summer Unless an unusual
and unlocked for warm spell sets in dur
ing the next three weeks, a full harvest
will have been gathered, and the great ice
houses along the Hudson and about the
lakes in which Greater New York and
Jersey City supplies are stored every
winter, will, according to good authority,
be filled to the point of bursting with
crystalline cakes of the sometimes pre-
cious commodity. This means that over
4,000 900 tons will have been harvested and
stored away. OF this amount, the upper
Hudson usually furnishes about 100000
and the lakes about 100000 tons.
The harvesting of this amount, too,
means that the price of ice next summer
will be about the same as it was last
summer, S. ton retail for amounts taken
usually by such customers as hotel pro-
prietors butchers, fish dealers and saloon
keepers. and so cents week where such
small amounts as will aggregate 130
pounds are served.
A week ago the outlook for gathering
harvest was decidedly poor, and the big
concerns engaged in the business began.
ito despair of gathering anything ike
OD.
orally supposed to be conducive to the ice
companies interests, allowing them to
force up prices to any figure agreed upon.
The manufacture OF artificial ice IS now
so common, however. and has advanced
to such a stage. of perfection that the
alarm cry of .iee famine doesnE cut Cor,
rather, increase) any figure, as it did some
years ago.
At Greenwood Lake and Lake Macopin
the New York and New Jersey Ice Lines
Company are housing 1000 tons of ice
day, besides sending at least thousand
tons a Gay by rail to partially supply the
big New York companies, which are just
now shut off from their ice houses up the
Hudson River.
Nearly all the ice from these latter
stores is brought to New York in boats
and navigation is closed in their vicinity.
Meanwhile the New York companies are
loading their houses from the ice fields.
The Ice Lines Company is bringing in Ice
from the lakes by rail and loading barges
at Weehawken TO meet the present
Greater New York demand. At Green
wood Lake it has two big icehouses, with
a capacity of 40 600 tons apiece. AT Lake
Macopin it has another house, with
capacity of $1,000 tons.
Prior to the recent cold snap the Ice
Lines Company had cut but a few car
loads of ice, and this was thin and rot
ten That which is now being harvested
is clear and fully twelve inches thick
The company has an army OF over hve
hundred men at work with improved ice
plows and other ice cutting machinery
Bahrenberg Bros, whose office is locat-
ed at Henderson street, and the D., L.
& w. Railroad are performing about the
same feat as the Ice Lines Company.
They gather their ice from lakes in Penn
sylvania Besides storing their big
houses they are railroading thousands of
tons to supply the present demand in
Greater New York, loading barges at the
D., l.. & w. piers.
The New Jersey Ice Company is at
present engaged to a large extent in
scraping snow from the ice. Their fields,
like those of the New York companies,
are up the Hudson.
The recent blizzard, it is said, left far
more snow on the upper Hudson than
upon the lakes.
Many of the big New York companies
gathering in the vicinity of Bangor is
said to be going on at rate never before
known. The mercury in the thermome-
ter in that locality is said to play about
zero mark.