TIu' watci's (if carli scrlioii (if llic I'nilcd Stales t-(inlaiii dif- 

 tcrcnl rlcDirnls m siilulioii. These elements give a dillereiil ap- 

 l>eaiaiu' to ilie peai'ls l"i-(mi those sections. Pearls t'rom onr clear, 

 pure, highland streams are a beautiful white; those from Wis- 

 consin, whose waters have a slight impregnation of coi)])er, are a 

 beautiful green, tliose from red, sandy streams being rusty-red- 

 disli. (>!• sdnu'times a beautiful bronze. An exi)crt can look at an 

 uiikiiiiwn pearl and tell from what section it came. 



I lls•l•oK^■ oi' i'l'ARi, Industry in TrCNNEssU]*;. 



Pearls had been found now and then in our rivers since the 

 white men first came here. No one appeared to realize their value 

 or possibilities. Nothing was done to develop the industry until 

 about 1876. About this year a fisherman on Caney Fork River, 

 near Lancaster, found a magnificent pearl which, after going from 

 one less posted man to another a little better posted, and so on 

 through several hands, is said to have brought in New York about 

 $2,000.00. and was probably worth, from the best descriptions I 

 have been able to get of it, not less than $10,000.00. This set the 

 people to looking for pearls and soon hundreds were making good 

 money in the then unworked mussel beds of that section. 



At the beginning of the pearl industry no one dreamed the 

 shells had any value. But later there came to this country a big, 

 tall, raw-boned, bespectacled German named Boeple. He, with 

 German thoroughness, made a personal investigation of many of 

 our pearl rivers. On the Cumberland he did not content himself 

 with beginning where pearls were then being found. Neither did 

 he content himself with beginning at the head of navigation as the 

 most determined Americans would have done. Dressed in a 

 uniform of serviceable khaki, at a time when khaki was unknown 

 in this country, he started from up in the feud country of the Pine 

 Mountains of Kentucky, where the Cumberland was about the 

 size of a large spring branch. He walked down it to the falls in 

 Whitley Country ; there built a rough plank canoe and continued 

 down to the mouth of the Cumberland near Paducah, something 

 near a thousand-mile exploration trip. Boeple came to see me 

 at Carthage. Re told me that he had found eighty different 

 species of mussels in Cumberland River, and that there was a for- 

 tune in working up the shells in pearl buttons. He urged me to 

 go in Avith him and start a button factory. No ! Not 1 ! I was 

 too smart to be drawn into the iridescent meshes of a dreamer ! 

 He went on to IN'Iuscatine, Iowa. Finally, finding he could get no 

 one to go in with him and furnish the needed capital he began 

 making buttons out of mussel shells in a little tumbledown shanty 

 in ^Muscatine. They laughed at him but watched him. Boeple 

 failed because of lack of money. One of the shrewd business men 

 of Muscatine saw the possibilities and established a factory that 

 made him a fortune. Soon prosperous factories sprang up in 



