The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1910-02-04
HOW PEARL BUTTONS ARE MADE
Interesting Article in IngIenOOk BY
Nephew OF Mrs. Crawford.

In the Inglenook Magazine for
January, published at Elgin, Illinois,
is an article on the pearl button in
dustry by c. MILFORD Robinson. Mr..
Robinson is nephew of Mrs. ]. N.
Crawford of this city. The article is
an interesting one and the Leader
Herald considers it worthy of repro
duction:
Thirty miles below Davenport, Iowa,
on the big bend of the Mississippi, is
the city of Muscatine. 1t is common
ly called the Pearl City" because of
its pearl button industry. The smoke
of its thirty-five button factories
ascends day and night. To think of
American-made pearl buttons is to
think of Muscatine. The city is the
cradle of the pearl button industry,
the producer of the greater part of
the total output of American-made
buttons, and the home of the largest
pearl button factory in the world
This is the button age. The day of
pins and hooks is past. We must
have buttons galore, not only for use
fulness but for adornment as we'll. A
button is a small and simple thing to
look at but the process of it's manu-
facture is not so simple. Compare
lively much more time and labor are
spent in making button than in
making the garment on which it is
worn.
Go with me through one of these
factories and watch the process of a
button in it's making. We will first
go to the basement where tons and
tons of clam shells are stored. These
shells are gathered from all large
rivers, the Mississippi and Illinois
rivers being the principal ones. But
these large rivers cannot supply the
demand, so many are shipped in from
the southern rivers. Owing to the
scarcity of these shells congress has
already secured the site and appropri-
ated money for the construction of a
fresh-water laboratory for the propa-
cation of these bivalves.
During the summer months the
mussel fishers are very numerous and
very busy. The fishing outfit consists
of two long rods to which are at
tached numerous . lines with three
pronged hooks. These hooks are
dragged along the bottom of the river.
They come in contact with the mussel
and the shell closes ON them. They
are then drawn up and the muscle
taken off and the same process re-
peated. The mussels are then taken
out and the shells shipped to the fac
tories.
There are two incentives for the
fishing of these shells. One is the
price which they bring and the other
is for the pearls which may be found
in them. The price of shells ranges
from twenty to forty dollars per ton,
and pearls are occasionally found
worth upward to a hundred dollars.
In rare cases they sometimes exceed
this.
We are now ready to proceed
through the factory. In the basement
these shells are sorted as to their
kind and size and put into tanks of
warm water to soak Two of the prin-
cipal kinds of shells are known as
'nigger-toe" and "washboards."
After having been soaked for few
days the shells are then ready for the
cutting department, The operator
holds the shell with a pair of spe-
cially-shaped tongs and while a
stream of water plays upon it it is
pushed against circular saw which
cuts out the blank buttons. The
average button is four lignes thick
and from four to twelve may be cut