In the dead of winter, when the Hudson River began to freeze, men awaited the call to harvest ice, and as the industry grew, workers from nearby cities, farmers, and fishermen depended on this work to supplement their incomes during the hard winter months. In its heyday, the R. & W. Scott Ice Co. employed 100 workers. Ice harvesting drew hard-working, hard-drinking men who endured backbreaking labor in freezing temperatures, and the work was dangerous and unpredictable because it depended on fickle winter weather. Accidents and injuries were frequent: large pieces of ice sometimes crushed men's legs and arms, machinery injured many, and men occasionally fell into the icy water and had to be dragged out by their crew. These risks forged a close-knit fraternity among the icemen, as tales of daring stunts and impressive strength and endurance spread quickly and earned heroic reputations, while older men taunted new recruits and crews played tricks on one another. Each year the harvest ended almost as quickly as it began, and after days of difficult work the icemen were left somewhat at sea, having worked themselves out of a job. The work itself involved an ice plow pulled back and forth by a horse along grooves, with each pass cutting two inches into the ice, and horses sometimes fell into the cold water and had to be hauled out, though few died. After the ice was separated into sheets, a channel connected the ice field to the ice house, and the first sheet was led by horses or by ice-cutters using long poles called hooks to an elevator into the house, where the ice was stacked between layers of sawdust until summer, when it would be transported downriver and sold in the cities.