PEARL BUTTONS

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 154, 27 December 1918, Page 11

PEARL BUTTONS

MADE FROM MUSSELS

HOW AN INDUSTRY HAS GROWN

SHORTAGE CAUSES GOVERNMENT . ACTION.

There is one increase in price for which the war cannot be blamed, The high, water in the Mjssksippi valley, by greatly decresing the season's supply of niussels, is responsible for the fact that the value of pearl buttons, now an almost hidispenaiple article, has gone up from two to three hundred per cent., according to the quality of the button. And this advance is not the trivial matter it might seem (says an American jpurnal). Few of us are familia-r with the magnitude of the paarl button industry, which has made several American millionai'ies, gives employment, to thousands, and best pf all, supplies the clothing ra.*nufacturer with gopd pe«rl button? at Ik., low price, in place of the china abQmjnatiDns prevalent' to a comparatively recent date. The change from the u»e of the china button tp the pearl ons oain« *boi;t through the accidental discovery of a young American turner. While walking along the bank of the Mississippi near Mtuscatine, Jowsj, one 4»y'in J. 890, he picked up * shell' which interested him. In the old country he hjiti made buttons from horn, He was empjoyed as a farm hand; and upon returning home he rigged up a fppt-]s(the in thp barn and tried it on the clam shell. The button bla-nks turned out were excellent, and several young women to whom the jnaker presented them, were highly delighted, they were so bright and pretty and so much thinner and lighter than the china buttqn then in use. y BTJTTQN-CRAXY Spurred on by their encouragement, tlje young man thought he .saw a, huge fortune in prospect; but Muscatine in those days was a Jively lumber town, and the .^.jnejrican, much -to his disap-pointme-nt, elicited little attention when he told of his discovery. Eventually, hpweyer, ha managed to. interest enough Cftpital/in liU project to get it started. The footrlathe was found to ,be too slow for turning out buttons-on a commercial scale, so the young inventor set about making a modern button machine. Others joined in, and soon improved cutting m,achijies operated by gaiplene engines were perfected, and it was possible to turn "puti buttons by the thousand. iluscatine proimptly went button-crazy. The huge demand for the new buttons resulted' in an army pf men engaged in shell-fishing. Day and night the Mississippi for miles north and south of Muscatine was dotted with the shellers' craft. Not only did the fishermen get good prices for the shells, but many of them also found pearls embedded in-the mussels, some; valued as high as 3000 to 4000 dollars. The territory around Muscatine became a,s :v mining camp without sfcakedout claims.. The river was free to all. Whole towns alongl its banlts awakened to the fact that the clam beds were mines of wealth, and'tho occasional finding of pearls gave a feverish fascination to the game. DOOM FACES THE INDUSTRY. ' A phqrfc tune afo, however, the alarming' discovery was ma<ie, that the mussel beds were r^idly.-gmng put. The shellfish wii'e' rioY;vrp{iirpttu.ein^ as rapidly as they werei being ma<je lip into buttons, and the whole, industry seemed doomed. Theii the United 1 Stater Federal Government stepped in Wd established limitations upon the dredging of mussels in certain' streams. Still the supply continued to diminish, in spite of the known wonderful fertility of the parent musseis. So a more careful scientific study was made by the biological experts of the Government, and some curious and interesting facts about the life history of the missel were, disclosedThe dangerous diminution in the supply of pearl button material, it was discovered, was due not alone to the taking out of the mussels, but more particularly to the destruction of fish in the rivers. It was learned that in its'early stages of development the fresh-water mussel is a parasite, its existence depending largely upon its ability to fasten itself to the gills or the fins of some fish. Certain species of the molluscs attach themselves exclusively to a certain kind of fish.'Thus the niggerhead mussel, one of the most prolific and valuable varieties, is parasitic on river herring almost entirely, < and the partial extermination of this fish has a material effect upon the natural reproduction of the musßels. With this and similar information as ft guide, the Government : has established a research laboratory a few miles from Muscatine, and has gone into the business of inuseel farming. THE CULTIVATION PROCESS. There are three distinct steps in the actual cultivation of the mussel. The first is to obtain a quantity of undeveloped infant mussels, which are taken frpm the. mother. A larger number of fish' are then caught in nets and transferred to tanks, The baby mussels, known at this stage of their development as glach,idia, are released in those tanks and allowed to attaoh themselves to the fish. This they do in a few minutes by means of their spined beaks. After examination has shown, that the young shellfish are firmly attached, the fish are released into the stream. From this point the mussel undergoes 'an extensive structural rebuilding. When nearly all its organs are developed it leaves its hpst and sinks to the river bottom, there fastening itself to some fixed object and entering upon its' life wort? of growing shell. 1 Severaf field parties from the new laboratory are constantly in, thjs work of accelerating the work of nature, thereby conserving billions of baby musseb which would not otherwise have opportunity to grow up. In the spring, after the heavy flopds, there atie many overflow ponds near the course of the Mississippi, which are filled with water and fish dv.ring' the flood, and left isolated as the water recedes. Under natural conditions these ponds dry up, and the fish in them die. ( The supply pf fish in the river is net sufficient to withstand this drain, cpupled with that of the market fisherman. In cpnnection with the work of mussel propagation, j these overflow pond« are seined out, and such fish as are suitable for inculcation of mussels are used in that work. These and all other fish that are taken are then liberated in the main course of the river, thus accomplishing a twofold object in the reclamation pf the fish and the inoculation with the mussel glsohidia. |