Natural science: mollusks stacked more than a mile high

In three successive years this small town produced more than a billion buttons annually.

This episode is a remarkable story told by an equally remarkable Guest.  Dustin Joy has the  great responsibility to reveal the circumstances along the Mississippi River which was the  Gold Rush of the Midwest!

Muscatine Iowa was the PEARL BUTTON CAPITAL OF THE WOLD.

https://muscatinehistory.org/about/


CLUSTERS OF CLAM SHELLS LIE on the banks of the Mississippi River in Muscatine, Iowa. Look closely and you’ll see each shell is dotted with perfectly neat holes. Many decades ago, these shells were plucked from the bottom of the river by the ton, soaked, steamed, and swept of their meat and pearls. Circular saws cut multiple discs out of each shell. These were called “blanks.” Each blank was sanded down into a perfect pearl button, ready to be sewn onto a dress, jacket, or glove.

Muscatine’s pearl button industry hit its peak between 1908 and the ’20s, when factories in the Iowa town produced 1.5 billion buttons, or one-third of the world’s pearl button supply. These buttons were worth $3.3 million, according to the 1910 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. But few of us who grew up along the Mississippi, who’ve held those milkweed-grey shells with holes in them, have actually held pearl buttons or heard a cohesive origin story about the industry. To get the definitive history I went to Terry Eagle, the Director of The National Pearl Button Museum at The History and Industry Center, in Muscatine. “The story of the pearl button is a national growth story, a national treasure story, and an environmental lesson,” Eagle says. “And if you don’t believe me now, I’ll prove it to you.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pearl-buttons-muscatine-iowa