Wisconsin Pearl Button Factory

Located east of railroad in present Black Lumber Company yard.

Photos courtesy of Clay County Courier

Inside A Button Shop, Around 1910...
By J. M. Oliver, Jr.
"For generations, the lonely mussel, the unpalatable freshwater cousin of the delectable oyster lived a life of unmolested ease in the river beds, with nothing to do save to thrive on the food that the waters brought to him and spawn succeeding generations of off-spring.  His only predators were the hogs that could snout him out of the shallow reaches of the streams and the pearler who tonged out the senior citizens of the mussel community, searching for pearls.  This existence changed at the turn of the 20th century when industry discovered that the bivalve made excellent pearl buttons and devised means for cuttinb button blanks out of them.  Shell hunters began to ply the waters, and huge piles of his remains appeared at the doors of the button factories that were established to dismember his bony carcass.  This picture shows the interior of such a button factory, with the operators at their machines.  The boy in the foreground toted the shells into the cutters and it was a messy operation since a stream of water had to be directed onto the saws to keep them from overheating.  The wages, based on quantity of blanks cut, was [sic] good, and there was, seemingly, no lack of raw material.  The blanks were shipped to Muscatine, Iowa and other points along the Mississippi river for processing.

"This picture, of around 1910 vintage, was taken before button cutting reached peak production period.  This shop was housed in a frame building on the East side of the railway and was shortly replaced by a concrete shop that had a score or more of cutters on the payroll.  With no idea that the native supply would ever be exhausted, the streams were so denuded of mussells [sic] that shelling would not provide a living wage and the industry vanished as quickly as it had developed.

"Operators in the photograph from left to right -- far row, Harry Grant, Tom Davenport, Bill Hettel and two unidentified.  Near row, the Hughes brothers, John and Charlie, two unidentifed and Dick Brown."

Corning Button Shop 1923
Work in one of the several button shops to be operated in Corning during the 1920s, ‘30s, and early ‘40s, provided the only income for many Corning families.  The above picture, made in the shop managed by the late Johnny Hughes, was provided to The Courier for publication this week by Herman O’Neal of Michigan, who said he worked in the shop in 1923.  O’Neal and his daughter were visitors to Corning for several days last week as he searched for familiar landmarks and old acquaintances.

The above photo is another view of the entire crew of the Corning Button Shop, East First Street and is the property of Roy Johnson.  He thinks this picture was made at the same time as the picture which appeared in last week’s Courier, 1923.  That picture shows an inside view of the workers which Johnson also owns.

Wisconsin Pearl Button Co. invoices, Corning, AR.  (Daniel E. Moore).

Submitted by Danny Moore