My grandfather, Robert Blomquist, used to work in the ice house in his home town of New Albin, Iowa. Some readers might remember that before refrigeration, ice was cut from lakes or rivers and packed into ice houses, essentially barns filled will sawdust or another such insulator, and later uncovered during the hot summer months. These ice blocks were delivered to nearby homes to cool food stored in ice chests.
Whole industries relied on the harvesting, storage, transportation, and further storage of blocks of ice. Ice saws were made and delivered, saw mills found markets for their otherwise useless dust, auto makers built insulated trucks to haul ice, and ice box makers lived a good life making insulted boxes will special trays for huge ice blocks.
Somehow, we let this industry fail, despite all of these jobs and other industries relying on the moving around big blocks of ice. Yet, we didn’t see an ice-block-bankruptcy-fueled recession.
Today, the big three auto manufactures claims that if they fail, America will fail with them. They claim that our GDP will drop precipitously, and we’ll be wishing that we had forked over the $25 billion to save ourselves from the auto-bankruptcy-fueled depression.
I don’t buy it. Delaying the changes that come with advances in technology, process, methods and new competition doesn’t erase the fact that any of those changes happened, it only delays the adaption to those changes.
Just as I don’t pine for the days of blocks of ice, I don’t wax nostalgic about the glory days of Detroit.
America will adapt. Just as the delivery men, ice cutters, saw mills, ice box makers, and others found ways to adapt to the changes that refrigeration brought, so too will American workers and manufacturers. And we’ll be better off for it.
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