VEGETABLE AND IMITATION 283 



shellac may be blown over the stencil on the button, leaving 

 the design white when the button is plunged in the dye. 

 All these colours are, however, only brought out in the fin- 

 ished state by chemical treatments. 



There remains the task of imparting a proper finish 

 to the surface of the button. This may be either dulled, 

 polished, or pressed. Some of the choicest kinds offer 

 a combination of several types of finish, as a polished 

 rim with a centre of dull finish, which is called the 

 "sandblast finish." Plain polished buttons of the finest 

 quality receive what is known as hand finish, each piece 

 being separately handled while polished on a buffing ma- 

 chine. 



The great development of the trade in tagua nuts is shown 

 by an annual importation into the United States valued 

 at $1,500,000. There are now in the land as many as 23 

 factories using this material, the capital involved amounting 

 to $4,000,000. Rochester and Brooklyn in New York, 

 Newark in New Jersey, and Springfield in Massachu- 

 setts are the chief centres of this manufacture, Rochester 

 being said to have the three best plants in the world, and 

 to make the highest grade material. 



The Colombian port of Esmeraldas owes its present pros- 

 perity, growth, and importance to the thriving trade in 

 vegetable ivory, of which the annual exports now amount 

 to 6,000,000 kilograms (13,200,000 pounds), and which 

 yields to the Colombian Government an annual revenue of 

 $487,000, the amount of the export duty collected on the 

 tagua nuts.* 



The provision in the tariff of 1897, imposing both a specific 

 and an ad valorem duty on buttons manufactured out of 

 vegetable ivory, led to a notable increase in the quantity 

 of this material imported into the United States. Prior to 



*Bulletin of the Pan-American Union, June, 1914, p. 937. 



