Refrigerating World Volume 55 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... Industries, to the members of the association, in which he animadverts on the chaotic condition of the transportation facilities of the country. Since that letter was sent out conditions have become worse. Meanwhile the Interstate Commerce Commission, in which is vested sole authority over cars, continues complacently indifferent to the anxieties of the executives of manufacturing plants and public utilities. The commission has issued an order, so all must soon be well---there will be an adequate supply of cars for every purpose. To question the effectiveness of the order to accomplish everything desired is, in the eyes of the commission, equivalent to doubting the benignity of providence. When the harried ice men hinted at further action they were chided by the commission for their frowardness and told to go home and cool off in their ice houses. But an ice plant is not a place in which its owner may hope to find coolness and freedom from worry when a sweltering public is clamoring for ice and there is none to give it. The commission, however, will remain cool. to collect, during the winter, a store of ice or snow, and to place it where it was protected from rain, from warm air, and from the direct rays of the sun. Two methods were practised by our ancestors. The simplest was to form the ground into a flattened cone in order to drain off the water from any portion of the melted ice; a layer of faggots was then put down, with straw or reeds a foot or more in thickness, and on this the ice was piled in a large conical mass, covered with straw to the thickness of one foot, then with faggot wood to a thickness of two feet, for the purpose of preserving a stratum of air above and around the ice; and, lastly, the whole was covered with two or...