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, 111., and a little later, July, 1887, stopped at Petersburg, 111., 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 situation 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 next few years he spent in farm work and railroad-construction labor; but during 

 this time he located other shell beds, in the Rock River near Rock Island, 111., 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. i.) 



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. 



o- The following account of the beginning of the industry is based on a statement written by Mr. Boepple at the request of the 

 director of the Falrport 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, 111., in 1872. 



