FRESH-WATER MUSSELS AND MUSSEL INDUSTRIES. 65 
It must be said, in explanation of the seemingly half-hearted endeavors and re- 
peated failures, that the use of any form of pearl for button making was not widely 
practiced in the United States, and that, in the countries where the manufacture was 
principally pursued, fresh-water shells of suitable quality were quite unknown. Further- 
more, the river shell is quite distinct from ocean pearl in its qualities, so that the same 
machinery and methods, as experience has proven, can not well be applied to both kinds 
of shell. 
For the practical initiation of the fresh-water pearl-button industry credit must be 
given to the late J. F. Boepple, a man of singular tenacity of purpose, indefatigable and 
unyielding by nature. His characteristics did not adapt him for commercial success, 
but they did enable him to battle against the varied obstacles that would have over- 
whelmed a weaker or less persistent character. By its conception and practical initia- 
tion, the fresh-water pearl-button industry is Boepple’s; by its development and eleva- 
tion to the plane of an important national industry it is the product of other resolute 
persons, who persisted through the period of threatened failures to compel the adapta- 
tion of the industry to the requirements of business efficiency. 
Mr. Boepple was a turner and button worker in Ottensen, Germany, near Hamburg, 
when a friend and fellow worker brought to the shop a box of shells of a kind entirely 
unfamiliar to them.? He said that they had been shipped to his father from America a 
good many years before, but did not know from what place they came, except that they 
were taken from a river ‘‘somewhere about 200 miles southwest of Chicago.’’ After 
some experimentation at odd times it was concluded that these mussel shells would be 
good for making buttons. In the following year Mr. Boepple sold his business and, 
taking with him a turning-lathe equipment and some other trade tools, embarked for 
America, where he landed in March, 1887. He first engaged in farm work near Gib- 
son City, Ill., and a little later, July, 1887, stopped at Petersburg, Ill., on the Sanga- 
mon River. He says, ‘‘While in bathing one day my foot was cut, and upon examina- 
tion of the cause I found the bottom of the river covered with mussel shells.’’ The 
vivid picture of the situaticn which confronted the young immigrant is given by his 
own words: ‘‘At last I found what I had been looking for; yet there still was a problem 
before me. I was without capital in a strange land among strange people and unfamiliar 
with the language.” 
The nextfew years he spent infarm work and railroad-construction labor; but during 
this time he located other shell beds, in the Rock River near Rock Island, Ill.,in the Mis- 
sissippi near Muscatine, Iowa, and in the Iowa River near Columbus Junction. At the 
last-mentioned place, having formed a shop, partly with equipment he had brought 
from Germany, he engaged after work hours and during the winter in making shell 
novelties, such as pins, bridle buttons and cuff buttons, for which he found a sale. 
(See Plate XXXVI, fig. 1.) 
Learning later that the price of buttons was becoming higher, he went to Muscatine, 
where he enlisted the financial and mechanical assistance of William Molis and R. Kerr, 
and there the first button factory was launched in the early part of 1891. 
@ The following account of the beginning of theindustry is based on astatement written by Mr. Boeppleat the request ofthe 
director of the Fairport station. It was the recollection of Mr. Boepple that the shells experimented with at Ottensen were 
muckets and three-ridges, and it is presumed that these are the shells shipped by Wm. Salter from Peoria, Ill., in 1872. 
