Evening star., 1909-05-09
By w. A. Du Puy

be saved from extinction, the
United States Government has called to its aid
extolled by Walt Whitman and set them to
work The fishes are proving willing workers.
and the result promised that the eighteen
thousand tons of pearl buttons worn in this
country may continue to result from the act1v1-
ties of home industries instead of being inn
ported from abroad Yet this would have
ceased to be possibility but for the energy of
the fishes
The button industry has been for the last few
years careering down the toboggan toward ex-
tinction The trouble has been that the har-
vesters of the button crop which had been ma
turing during many years have suddenly got
wondrously busy IN their reaping and that no
attention has been paid to sowing seed for new
raw material The fishes have been engaged to
go out and plant the new crop
The whole history of the button business is
interesting 1t was ] F Boepple, German,
who discovered that conditions the Upper
Mississippi were much more favorable for the
manufacture of pearl buttons than they were in
his fatherland or even in Austria. the center of
the industry, this because of the wonderful
abundance of suitable clamshells Boepple
started a factory at Muscatine, Iowa. the first
in the United States, and thereby established
that town as the center of the industry in this
country
As time passed great factories grew up in
Muscatlne. and these finally overf1owed that
town and spread up and down the MISSISSIPPI
River for two hundred miles. until the bound
airy line between Iowa and Illinois was teeming
with activity. and clamshell fishermen were
busy in all the streams thereabout Yet SO
quietly did it all come about that few people
knew of its development
importance of CLANS
THE presence of clans musses is respon-
sibe for it In the lime bearing waters of the
Upper Mississippi and IN practically all the
tributaries OF that stream are found an abun-
I,~,o colc
head, five inches long. being the favorite and
run a close second by the washboard the pock-
etbook. the mucket. and others
These mussels arrange themselves in beds at
the bottom of the streams They point them
selves up stream and open their mouths that
the food supplying waters may pass between
their valves Any foreign object that comes
between these valves causes them to close i'm
mediately and hold on to it The fishermen
take advantage of these facts and arrange
clever device for catching them. A hoop from
which depend many hooks makes up the appa-
ratus This is dragged over the bed. and each
time a hook enters the open mouth of niger
head it is closed upon Soon the haul is dragged
single fisherman may catch thousand
pounds OF mussels. worth eight dollars in day.
So great became the number of factories on
the Upper Mississippi and SO industrious the
fishermen that the beds have practically been
exhausted The fishermen have retreated far
ther and farther from the factories in following
the mussel beds and have paid the freight on
raw material back to the factory Finally the
Mississippi was left and such fertile streams as
the Wabash were invaded. These beds are now
practically worked out and operations have
been extended as far as the White River in In
diana. Each year fifty thousand tons of shell
is used up in the industry and one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars is paid out in freight on
raw material which is no longer to be had
the factories. There is the danger of exhaust
ing these streams also. and finally all other