Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1922-02-20
THE ALEXANDRIA GAZETTE MONDAY, FEBRUARY TO- 1922

they use. Speaking of buttons, by
the way, we wonder how many Of you
have any sort of idea where we get
the buttons on most of our cloths?
We found that many of the very best
buttons were made Of buffalo horn.
1t is transparent or practically trans
parent substance; It's hard, takes a
fine polish and because of its trans
parency it partakes of the color of
the cloth against which it is sewed
which makes for harmony in shad-
ing, in other words, does its little bit
toward the quality appearance of
tne garment. Then another kind of
button such as the ones on your
vest and trousers, the sleeves to
your coat frequently, and so on,
originally grew on trees. We mean
that literally, only they didn't grow
like buttons, of course They are
made of peculiar nut which is
commercially called vegetable iy-
ory." 1t grows in the tropics and
as it ripens it becomes very hard.
The Transformation process very
briefly is to gather the nuts as they
drop from the trees, to continue their
exposure to the sun and weather
which further hardens them and
the shell is removed. Incidentally,
you couldn't cut it with any steel saw
in any machine shop in America.
They break it off with hammer;
it's as brittle as it's hard. Then
the kernel or moat of the nut which
is very much like ivory in appear
ance and every bit as hard as ivory
is cut out and into pieces by a band
saw. The cutting leaves in a lathe
and bored for the thread, dyed the
desired color, finished off by polish
ing, etc., into buttons. Incidentally,
about fifty nuts on the average are
cut up to get one piece big enough
for the large overcoat buttons.
There's lot more interesting about
this buttons growing on trees idea
but we don't want to take your time
to go into it.
We have been asked why We have
to buy foreign wool before we use up
all our own wool in America We
have been asked why We can only
use little less than half of our own
wool for making good clothing. Re-
garding the latter part of it, we'd
like to point out that the same pro-
portion is generally found. We don't
know of any wool producing district
where all the wool goes into clothing,
there's bound to be a pretty steadily
established proportion not suitable for
clothing of the finer grade; some Of
it perhaps acceptable for the cheap
er grades of clothing, then there is
some that cannot go into clothing
at all-carpet woods and the like.
The kind of sheep producing the
wool has something to do with it,
the nature Of the climate, and the
different articles of food for the
flocks in different parts of the coun-
try, all have an influence On it. We
are told that good or bad season
such as particularly dry year also
has a noticeable effect. We have
been asked, too, why it is so hard to
sell wool right now here in Texas for
example. We don't pretend to be
on the drawing marketing and finan-
cling Of raw wool by any means but it
seems to US that if we remember that
about the first thing the government
did after We got into war was to
take control of the wooden production
entirely, we can see why the mar
kets would be upset. They were used
for army and navy clothing and blan-