The American Ice Company
In the Summer of 1900, Ice Was a Hot Topic
Today in the northeastern US is what my parents would call a “scorcher.” The WGA and SAG-AFTRA v. Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers standoff is continuing hot and heavy, too, with at least one anonymous studio exec telling Deadline the AMPTP’s strategy is “to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their houses.” Hot words that got me thinking about labor justice and justice-justice and cold-melty things, not necessarily in that order.
In turn-of-the-century New York as in other American big cities, ice famines were a particularly nasty exemplar of corporate greed. As recently as my own late grandmother’s day, refrigeration consisted of ice boxes, often improvised crates insulated with straw or newspaper. Into these primitive food storage lockers went a big block of ice, meant to last a week in summer, longer in colder weather. When ice prices were hiked artificially high, the milk soured and the meat spoiled. As always, the working poor bore the brunt. Babies sickened. Some died.
By the summer of 1900, the American Ice Company was a $60 million enterprise that, through myriad dirty dealings, including greasing the palms of New York City pols, had managed to secure a monopoly on ice sales. Once it did, the company jacked up ice prices a whopping 100%, from 25 cents to 50 cents a block1 and later to 60 cents a block.2
“Sixty-cent ice has come to stay. This company is in business to make money for its stockholders.” — Charles W. Morse, The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 1900
American Ice was founded and run by Charles W. Morse, aka The Ice King, a Maine multi-millionaire who’d started in shipping and then come up with the (evil) genius plan to consolidate a bunch of other ice companies into one behemoth enterprise.3
Morse held New Yorkers hostage during the height of the summer heat. His plan finally backfired when the New York Journal and Advertiser revealed he had obtained special treatment from Tammany Hall4, including exclusive access to the Port of New York for his ice ships, in exchange for giving New York City mayor, Robert Van Wyck, and Tammany Hall boss Richard Croker hefty shares in American Ice.
The ensuing scandal was the ruin of both Croker and Van Wyck. Tammany Hall, which historically had positioned itself as the champion of the little guy, namely Irish immigrants and other working class New Yorkers, likewise was left with a big ole black eye. The Society, as it was also known, lost the 1901 mayoral election to a non-Tammany reformer candidate, Seth Low.5 As the former graft battling mayor of Brooklyn, Low must have seemed — and been — a breath of fresh air.6
I’d like to say Morse got his comeuppance as well but alas, not in this life. Once the scandal broke, he quickly pivoted, forming a holding company, the Ice Securities Company, and manipulating its stock so that he exited the ice biz with a profit of $12 million7 — the equivalent of $435,870,000 today. He died of pneumonia in 1933, having slipped the proverbial noose several more times, including an indictment for war fraud in the Great War.8
I wrote about the American Ice debacle in IRISH EYES, the launch of my American Songbook series releasing this December 2023 from Lume Books. I’ll be sharing the (gorgeous, stunning, dream-come-true!!!) book cover here… very soon. For now, enjoy this excerpt (narrated by my heroine, Rose) and please share this post with other history lovers.
That spring 1900, Joe and I went head-to-head in our first-ever fight over, of all things, ice. In those days, ice was an essential household commodity, for most tenement dwellers couldn’t afford a proper ice safe to store perishables, instead making do with a wood box stuffed with rags or newspaper to slow the ice block’s melting. Fortunately, unlike so many staples in the city, ice was inexpensive.
Until Maine native, Charles W. Morse, pooled his sundry ice interests into one large trust, the American Ice Company. Morse lost no time in offering cut-rate shares to city officials, including Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck and Boss Richard Croker of Tammany Hall, the municipal Democratic party machine. In return, Morse’s ships received privileged access to the city docks, enabling American Ice to drive most competitors out of business.
In April, just as the weather was warming, American Ice doubled its prices and announced it would no longer sell the five-cent chunks upon which tenement households relied. Mid-May, temperatures spiked to ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Milk spoiled. The health consequences for infants and young children prompted a public outcry. Bowing to pressure, American Ice went back to selling five-cent blocks, again sending its wagons to the tenement districts, ours included.
The concession came too late. The press took up the battle cry. Joseph Pulitzer’s The World ran a cartoon of a tiger-tailed Boss Croker waving an ice block whilst a sad-eyed mother saw to her sick baby. I made the mistake of showing it to Joe over breakfast one morning.
He cast me a cold look, a feat, considering we were burning up even with the fan going. “Think that’s funny, kicking a good man when he’s down?”
Stunned, I stared at him across the table. “A good man, Richard Croker? American Ice is bad enough, but it’s come out he’s invested in two other big companies, Manhattan Elevated Railroad and U.S. Fidelity & Casualty Company – both with city contracts.”
“So what?”
“Croker’s a crook, that’s what. He lines his pockets whilst pretending to protect working people.”
It was the worst thing I could have said. Bearded, big-bodied, and the son of Famine immigrants, Croker was Joe’s sort of fella.
“Tell me, Missus High and Mighty, if the day comes when you find yourself with a husband too wounded to work or worse, left a widow, who do you think’ll pay the landlord, the grocer – the funeral director? It won’t be any muckety-muck reformers, that’s for damned sure. I’ll tell you who it’ll be – Tammany!”
He shoved away from the table and stormed out. Though we made up later that night and into the wee hours, I couldn’t but feel that our marriage, so shiny new, bore an indelible dent.
Copyright 2023 Hope C. Tarr
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https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/american-ice-company/
The Wall Street Journal, 9 May 1900, Wed, page 2 via newspapers.com
Unless otherwise noted, this post draws from the excellent book, Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics by Terry Golway. 2014, W.W. Norton & Co.
The municipal Democratic party machine at the time, Tammany Hall controlled access to the city-operated docks in the Port of New York.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/crooked-richard-boss-croker-reigned-tammany-hall-article-1.803373
Ibid. Brooklyn was annexed to NYC on January 1, 1898, resulting in the city’s current five-borough structure.
Pringle, Henry F., The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, Chapter 33. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1939.
“C.W. Morse Dead; Former Financier. Ex-New Yorker Who Controlled 13 New York Banks is a Victim of Pneumonia. Long Known as ‘Ice King.’” New York Times, January 13, 1933 via TimesMachine.
Interesting to learn of yet another angle on New York corruption. The Hudson Valley still has the ruins of massive ice houses along the Hudson where ice from lakes and the river was stored in the winter and sent to NYC year round. A substantial industry.
Wonderful excerpt.
Enjoyed learning the history, too.