In the face of gloomy assessments of Boston’s future after Bank of America’s buyout of Fleet (and Manulife’s buyout of John Hancock recently), David Warsh sees a familiar economic cycle, using the history of Boston’s refrigeration-ice industry as an anecdote:
By 1833, Tudor was shipping ice halfway around the world Â- 180 tons to Calcutta. By 1846, Boston shipped 65,000 tons of ice, and ten years later, more than twice as much, to ports as far away as Australia and China. “Ice had become a major commodity, a New England staple for the world market,” writes Boorstin. Tudor had become known far and wide as “The Ice King.”
Then, gradually, the bottom began to drop out of BostonÂ’s ice business. Other firms entered the business, bringing down prices. Tinkerers invented means of mechanical refrigeration Â- gas compression as early as 1851, vapor compression using ammonia by 1859….”Ice boxes” Â- refrigerators cooled by blocks of natural ice Â- were quaint relics of the past.
But Boston didnÂ’t disappear just because its ice business melted away.
….Boston long has understood that when businesses mature, they move to the suburbs. So itÂ’s become a branch city in retail banking? ItÂ’s branch city in refrigeration, too.
Of course, there was a period - roughly the middle part of the 20th century - when Boston was economically depressed, so it’s not as if economic decline can’t happen. Still, Warsh usefully reminds us that decline or loss of control of one industry is not decline of the economy as a whole.
No comments have been added to this post yet.