John Boepple was a master craftsman in Hamburg, Germany. He was skilled at making buttons from animal horn and hooves, bone and seashells. John had heard about the fresh-water mussels in the Mississippi River. He was convinced there was a fortune to be earned in making buttons from these shells with their pearl-like inside coating.
In John Boepple set sail for the New World with his idea. But when he arrived he found no one willing to loan him money to start such a business. So he took work as a farm hand in Iowa.
In his spare time John built a foot-powered machine, based on what he had learned in Germany. He gathered shells from the river, cut buttons, polished and sold them.
A few people became interested enough to put up the money for starting a button factory. In Boepple Button Company opened a one-room factory in Muscatine, where the supply of mussels was good. By the next year the company was doing so well that it moved to a larger building, where it operated for four years.
As button manufacturing caught on in Muscatine, business just seemed to slip away from John. Other people took his ideas and made their own fortunes. The craftsman from Hamburg was a good button maker, but not such a good businessman, and his company failed.
Meanwhile John Boepple's method for making buttons had been taken up in cities all along the Mississippi River. Within ten years the Pearl City (Muscatine) became the largest manufacturer of fresh-water pearl buttons in the world. In Iowa turned out 138,615,696 buttons!
Even a fairly simple kind of manufacturing like button making creates many jobs. Clam fishers in small boats dragged sets of hooks along the river bottom where, as the History of Muscatine County () tells us:
It is the habit of the clam to lie with his mouth open upstream, to catch little morsels of food that are carried down... and when one of those wire hooks touches his tender lips, the wretched fool grabs it, closes his shell upon it and holds on...
The fishers then brought in their catch, and the clams were thrown into big pots of boiling water to kill them. Men and women pried the loosened shells apart and cleaned out the whitish meat.
From the riverbank, wagoners hauled the shells to the factory, where they were soaked in water for about a week. This softened the shells so that they didn't break so easily while being sawed.
The cutters were the highest paid workers in the button factory and were always men. It was a skilled job, because a good cutter got as many button blanks out of each shell as possible. He used a saw that revolved and cut a hole in the shell, the cut-out part being the button blank. These blanks were dropped into a bucket by the cutter, and then carried to a line of workers at grinding machines (usually boys). Here the rough outer side of shell was removed and the blanks ground to an even thickness.
A conveyor belt carried the blanks to the finishing machine. Along the belt a worker turned them all rough side up. At the finishing machine, another worker carved out the center and drilled the holes. Buttons were fed into this machine by hand, one at a time.
To shine them, the buttons were tumbled in a churn with water and powdered pumice for half a day. Finally they were washed, dried in sawdust and moved onto the sorting tables. Women and girls sorted the buttons according to quality, color and luster. Some were hand sewn on cards, and others were placed in boxes for shipping.
Women held many jobs in button manufacturing, usually the less skilled and lower paying positions. Cutters made an average of $8 to $10 a week, considered fairly good pay at the time. Facers, drillers and packers—all positions filled by women—were paid between $4 and $6 a week. This was also good wages, but the women could not hope to move up to the best paying job of a cutter. Boys and girls under sixteen also found work in the button factories in other positions.
When John Boepple opened his button factory in , there were thousands of mussels bedded in the mud at the bottom of the Mississippi River. The factories cut, polished and sold pearl buttons as fast as the fishers could bring in the shells. By there were very few clams left "lying with (their) mouths open upstream" to snap up the hooks.
But clam fishers found new, untouched beds in the Arkansas, Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. The shells were shipped by barge or rail to Muscatine, and the button business kept going. But eventually button makers would turn to plastics, which were cheaper and easier to work with. They would not need the Mississippi or any other river, and button making would all but disappear from Iowa.
Wiko are exported all over the world and different industries with quality first. Our belief is to provide our customers with more and better high value-added products. Let's create a better future together.
When the clam beds of the Mississippi had been fished out, John Boepple went to work for the federal government to help solve the problem of the disappearing fresh water mussel. Until he died in he worked at the clam and mussel hatchery near Fairport as a shell expert. The hatchery hoped to produce enough mussels to restock the riverbeds. Unfortunately, rivers became polluted with industrial waste and city sewage and the mussel couldn't survive in the polluted water.
Source:
As you shop for crisp shirts and uniforms to prepare the kids for back-to-school, you probably haven’t paid much attention to the buttons on their shirts. But would you believe those tiny fasteners once helped fuel an entire industry along Arkansas’s rivers? In the early s, Arkansas was at the center of a pearl rush and by mid-century, we were producing buttons in large quantities.
It all started with mussels (mollusks) and a little sparkle.
At the turn of the 20th century, the quiet town of Black Rock, Arkansas, came alive with excitement. In , a local man opened a freshwater mussel and found a shining, natural pearl inside. News spread quickly, and soon, hopeful treasure hunters lined the banks of the Black River, eager to see their fortune in a shell. This brief craze, known as the Arkansas Pearl Rush, drew nationwide attention to the state’s freshwater streams.
But the rush didn’t last long. By , the excitement over pearls was fading. Still, shelling went on. People began to notice something else inside those discarded mussel shells—an iridescent lining called mother-of-pearl. And with that discovery came a new kind of gold mine: buttons.
There was a growing industry in Muscatine, Iowa, where haberdashers used mussel shells to make buttons. So, Dr. James H. Myers of Black Rock started collecting discarded shells to send north. However, sending them away seemed pointless when the Arkansas Delta waters were teeming with various mussel species. Button factories in Arkansas were reported as early as and remained active through the early s.
As the pearl rush faded, a second wave of the button industry took off. During the s and s, Arkansas became a center for harvesting mussel shells and shaping buttons from their shiny inner layers. Towns like Clarendon, Newport, Parkin, Corning, and De Valls Bluff weren’t just rural communities; they housed button factories that helped clothe a nation.
For many Arkansans, it was a hands-on industry. Locals had favorite foraging spots along the rivers, diving for mussels with homemade gear crafted from old gasoline cans, hot water heaters and tin buckets. What began as pearl hunting turned into an early version of “work from home.” People could stop by the factory on their way home from work to drop off their finds or even rent a button puncher to use at home, turning their catch into buttons in their backyard.
You could make hundreds of buttons from a single batch of mussel shells. It was simple, profitable and surprisingly beautiful work. And if you’ve ever run your fingers over a vintage coat or blouse and noticed the creamy shine of its buttons, chances are, it once floated down a river in Arkansas.
The influence of the industry extended well beyond fashion. Clarendon and nearby towns literally paved their roads with discarded shells. After button blanks were punched out of the shells, the remaining scraps, small crescent-shaped pieces, were crushed and used as gravel for streets, driveways and alleys. Some roads in eastern Arkansas still glisten with bits of mother-of-pearl, reflecting the region’s hardworking history.
The button industry provided farming families with an extra income opportunity that easily fit around harvest times and the busy schedules of larger families. Men could bring in the harvest, while women and children could open and sort them to prepare for transport to the factory. Of course, the occasional “slug” pearl find was always an exciting little treasure hunt.
As new materials like plastic surfaced, the button industry, like many others connected to handcrafted work and natural resources, started to decline. Mechanization sped up production but also made the charm of hand-punched shell buttons less practical. What once appeared to be a clever way to use nature’s leftovers became too expensive and slow to remain competitive.
Overharvesting came with a high cost. The population of American freshwater mussels has declined, and some species have become endangered. That decline still impacts areas like Clarendon today. As plans developed to replace the bridge, a large mussel bed, about the size of a dinner plate, had taken hold of the pile’s base and delayed the project. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, along with other ecological partners, led efforts to protect these species, which are vital to the river ecosystem, as they clean and reproduce within the waters. Even now, the mussels serve as a reminder of the region’s fragile ecological balance.
Today, Arkansas’s mussels are protected, and ongoing conservation efforts help preserve the remaining river ecosystems that once supported this busy button industry. Research institutions, museums, and state agencies continue to educate the public about the role of mussels in Arkansas’ history and why they remain important and require proper care.
Pictures in the story were taken at historical museums in the Arkansas Delta.
Are you interested in learning more about River Shell Button? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!