The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1904-01-09
VOL. 39.--NO. 12.

the principal articles of manufacture. New
York State manufactures more than 80
tper cent. of all the collars and cuffs pro
duced in the United States, and Troy alone
produces Sc per cent. of the States total.
BUTTONS.
Button manufacture is one of the minor
industries of considerable Importance, the
value of the products in 1900 amounting
to 81, ,695, ,910, or 81 per cent. more than
in 1890. The most interesting feature of
this industry is the remarkable develop
ment that took place between 1890 and
1900 in the manufacture of fresh water
pearl button blanks. Illinois, Iowa and
Missouri furnished the bulk of this bust
ness, whose products in 1900 were valued
at 5000, O36. In 1890 there was not
single fresh water pearl button made in the
United States, ten years later the making
of them constituted the second most i'm
portant branch of the button industry.
J. F. Boepple, of Muscatine, Iowa,
native of Hamburg, and button maker,
discovered in 1891 that the unio or ''nig-
gerhead shells banked up for miles along
the Mississippi aud Missouri rivers would
furnish suitable materials for pearl buttons.
He started in business on a small scale and
soon found imitators. Already the mussel
beds in front of Muscatine, Iowa, have
been exhausted and notwithstanding the
enormous deposits to be found in Western
rivers the raw material viii disappear un-
less something is done for the protection of
the mussels. The shells cost at the fac
tories from 80 te 60 cents per hundred
pounds, whereas the ocean pearl shells cost
100 times as much
Nearly all of the Western factories cut
blanks from the shells and send them to
the Eastern factories to be shaped and fin
ished.
The shells are first cooked and The meat
removed, after which they are soaked to
render them less brittle. Blanks are cut
from the shells BY cylindrical saw mount
ed on lathe The back of the button is
ground on an emery wheel to remove the
skin and make the surface even. The
blank is then ready for the button manu-
facturer Each button is turned separate
ly, but machinery is employed to facilitate
the operation After the holes have been
bored nothing remains to be done except to
polish the buttons, for which purpose they
are rolled about in barrel with polishing
fluid
In 1887 the United States Consul re-
ported that it would be impossible to make
pearl buttons in the United States in com
petition with Austria owing to the fact that
the work had to be done by hand and labor
could be obtained in Austria at 81 to 50. so
per week Eleven years later Consul Gen
eral Hurst reported that the industry in
Austria had dwindled to an insignificant
figure owing to the development of the in
dustry in the United States The impor-
tations to this country fell from s1,612,
000 in 1887 to $50, 262 in 1900.
Metal and covered buttons have been
made in this country for many years, Cas-
per Wistar manufactured brass buttons in
Philadelphia in 1850, and John Fitch
stopped in Trenton during the Revolution
airy War to make metal buttons. Vegeta-
ble ivory and bone buttons have also been
made for half century or more, and quite
recently composition and eelluloid buttons
have been made in great variety. Buttons
have also been made of potatoes, which,
after being chemically treated, look ike
horn