In
McClure’s Magazine for February there is a very interesting story, there is a
very interesting article on button making, and it recalls to the writer of
these musings how near it happened nine years ago that a branch of that
industry sought to establish a factory in Hamilton. It is an interesting story
and we will tell it with all the brevity its importance demands. Some
twenty-five years ago, a German living at Muscatine, Iowa, went out on a
fishing expedition in the Mississippi River, and in trailing along the bottom
of the river, his hooks caught in a bed of fresh water clams and he hauled a
large one to the surface. The German, in his native land, had worked in a
button factory, and the finding of the bed of clams suggested to him the
possibilities of making buttons out of the shells. He took a number of shells
home and boiled them clean, and then with some tools he had used in the button
trade in the old country, made a dozen of buttons and sewing them on a card,
sold them for ten cents to a storekeeper. That was the first dozen of buttons
ever made from the clam beds of the Mississippi, and out of that was created an
industry that has brought millions of dollars to a few towns along the river in
Illinois and Iowa. Down in Louisiana, more clam beds were discovered, and this
started the button industry in some of the river towns there. The interior of
the clam shell gives a bright ivory surface, and the samples in possession of
the Muser are interesting. Prior to the discovery of the clam beds in the
Mississippi river twenty-five years ago, there were no pearl buttons made in
America, and those made in foreign countries were from salt-water clams or
mussels and were principally handwork, the machinery in use being very crude.
The discovery of freshwater clams in the Mississippi river and the German’s
knowledge of the button industry, opened a new field for labor, and from being
a lumber town, Muscatine went into clam shell fishing and button making. It was
some time before machinery was invented to do the work, and the buttons were
made with the crudest kind of tools. Three young Irishmen who had a plumber’s
shop in Muscatine finally invented a machine and the first one was rented for
one dollar a day to the German who first discovered the wealth of shells in the
river. Hundreds of those machines are now in use in the towns on the
Mississippi, from Muscatine down to New Orleans, and the ivory button trade
amounts to millions of dollars annually. The manufacturers successfully compete
with the foreign product, and with the liberal duty under the McKinley tariff,
thousands of women and children are earning good wages. Some of the fishermen
have been fortunate in finding in the clam shells pearls of great value, for
which they have realized $5,000 for a single pearl. Two men employed in one of
the factories, working side by side, found in the shells two valuable pearls.
At once they threw up their job and started for Chicago, where they sold the
pearls for $2,000 each, and lived on the fat of the land till every dollar was
spent; and they returned to Muscantine, tramping and riding on the buffers, and
again took up their old job of button making. An Iowa German went out one day
fishing and hauled in a big black clam shell. When the shell was opened, there
was nestling inside a handsome pearl. A Chicago jeweler who was in Muscantine
at the time looking for pearls paid the German $3,000 for his find. “Goodbye to
Muscantine,” said the German; “I am off for my old home in the interior of the
state and will buy the farm on which my family are now living as renters.” The
magazine article is full of interest, but it is what Hamilton lost that we are
going to tell briefly.
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In the month of March, 1906, a member of
a large button firm doing business in Burlington, Iowa, came to Hamilton to
look over the field for the purpose of starting a factory here. There was a
widespread reputation of Hamilton as an electrical city, for at that time the
Cataract Power company, through John Patterson, was sending broadcast the fame
of Hamilton as the coming great industrial city. And, by the way, no
Hamiltonian did more, or as much, to bring to this city American capital and
industries. The Burlington capitalist was well-pleased with the outlook, and at
once began to plan for the opening of a factory. Very wisely he called at the
American consulate to obtain such information as would naturally help him, and
was thus put in communication with John Hall, who had charge of the industrial
promotion of the city. To start right, the capitalist was advised at the
consulate to learn from the departments at Ottawa on what conditions he could
bring in machinery and the material to make buttons, and John Hall opened
correspondence with Ottawa. The answer was that the machinery would be admitted
at a nominal sum, but that a duty would be charge on the blanks from which the
buttons were made. The proposition of the Burlington manufacturer was that he
should be permitted to bring in the blanks as it would be too costly to ship
the whole shells on account of wastage, as from each shell not more than half a
dozen blanks could be produced. The remainder of the shells would be worthless
except for road building, and the question was whether they could get enough
out of the refuse to pay the cost of transportation. As the government would
not yield anything on that point, the proposition fell through, and Hamilton
did not get the button factory, nor is there a factory in Canada today in that
line of business. So certain was the Burlington man that the government would
readily accede to getting an industry of that kind, which did not interfere
with any other Canadian industry, that he had made a contract for a building
for his business. A sample of the blanks was sent to Ottawa, so that the
officials could see just what the company asked free entry for. The writer has
a handful of the blanks which he kept during the past nine years and were lying
forgotten in a pigeonhole in his desk till the reading of the magazine article
recalled them to memory. The Burlington Manufacturer intended to begin
operations with a force of fifty or sixty hands, men and women, and as the
trade developed the number would be increased to keep up with the demand. Those
employed in the Iowa factories are earning good wages, and there was no reason
to suppose that less would be paid here. The electric power was the great
inducement for the promoters to come to Hamilton with their industry. A
short-sighted policy kept the button industry out of Hamilton and out of
Canada. We might mention here that at first the refuse of the shells had no
value, but one day a button maker crushed a number of shells into powder and
fed them to an old hen that had about retired from the egg-producing business,
and immediately Biddy got busy and began laying again. That was the beginning
of a new industry, and now the pulverized shells are sold as chicken feed.
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Those who visit the hospitals with
benevolent intent meet with cases and incidents that touch their hearts. The
other day a lady visitor was passing through the children’s ward when she was
attracted by a childish voice singing so sweetly a hymn she had learned in the
Plymouth Brethren Sunday school. The little girl was unconscious while singing,
for in her seasons of delirium there is a hint of a kind of tender sweetness in
her voice that is like the flavor of old music half forgotten. Father and
daughter were both in the hospital at the same time, suffering from typhoid
fever. As the child neared the end of each verse, her voice died away, and
became lost; and then she would begin again, the same result following. The
lady visitor and others in the ward were so overcome with the child’s singing
that they were moved to tears, for the air and the words of the hymn, with the
sweet cadence of the voice of the unconscious singer, lifted them from this
world for the moment to the land beyond in which the child wandered in her
delirium. The hymns and songs that one learned in childhood are never
forgotten, for they come back in after life as a pleasant memory of home and
mother. The small audience that were attracted in the hospital ward that
afternoon by the voice and song of the fever-tossed child will never forget the
influence upon them for the time being. The songs of our youth never pass from
memory. Many a man and woman who has been lured into the paths of error and sin
have been checked in their unfortunate course by hearing the songs they learned
at mother’s knee or in the Sunday school. The story as told by the lady visitor
at a meeting of ladies recently loses its force when put into cold type for the
readers of these musings, but it may recall pleasant thoughts of childhood to
some who have not given much attention to things of the past.
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It recalls to the memory of the Muser an
incident of the civil war in the United States of half a century ago. Soldiers
in time of peace are generally regarded as harum-scarum sort of fellows, but
when it gets down to real war a great change comes o’er the spirit of one’s
dream. Then there is a difference in the professional soldier – one who enlists
because he likes a dashing uniform and an easy time – and in the volunteer
soldier who comes to the front when the flag of his country is threatened. Over
two millions of the men and boys volunteered from 1861 on till the last call
was made for more human food for powder. At first many those from the north
hardly knew what a musket was for, and the same was true of the large army that
came up from the south. Hundreds of thousands left wife and children, mothers
and sisters, and to the rataplan of the drum and the piercing tones of the
fife, they marched to fight for what they believed was the right, and not as
professional soldiers. Those boys went from home and its influences, taking
with them the training of their childhood days. By the campfire at night, they
sang the songs of home and the hymns they had learned in Sunday school and
church. The ribald song was rarely heard, as the singer would be speedily
hissed down. These surroundings will in a large measure account for the morale
of both armies. Here and there some would drop by the wayside in an evil hour,
forgetting the past. Card-plying was one of the pastimes in camp, with poker on
the side for very small stakes; but there was one thing remarkable, that when
the long roll beat for a prospective brush with the enemy, no man carried a
pack of cards with him – they were scattered hither and you; the testament and
book of sacred songs could be found in nearly every man’s pocket, Protestant
and Catholic. One of the greatest comforts to the sick and wounded in the camp
hospitals was the visits of a quartet of singers of an afternoon, and how the
poor fellows did enjoy the songs of home and the songs they sang in church and
Sunday school, especially the grandest of all songs, Home, Sweet Home. That
little girl in the city hospital, even in her delirium, wandered back to the
songs she learned in the Plymouth Brethren Sunday school. There is a power in
music that haunts us even when other incidents in life are forgotten.
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The incident herewith related has been
referred to in a former musing some years ago, but as now new readers are added
to the Spectator and the older ones may have forgotten it, it may stand repetition.
During the civil war in the United States, there was brought one night into the
camp hospital on the banks of the Kanawha river, in West Virginia, a sergeant
of the Third Virginia cavalry, a stalwart young fellow, but broken down with
long and hard campaigning. He had been seized with fever while on duty and
brought to the hospital for treatment. From the first, the surgeons had no hope
of his recovery, for his mind had wandered off to the days of his childhood,
and his then present condition was a blank to him. He had a rich tenor voice
when in health, and all night long he tried to sing that grand old Methodist
hymn, A Charge to Keep I Have, a God to Glorify. His voice started in strong at
the first, but as he proceeded, it died away as though the sound came down
through the Kanawha valley. He never got beyond the first verse, for before
reaching the end of the four lines his mind and his voice seemed to be in
another world. Toward daybreak in the morning, he seemed to rally for a moment,
and then with one more effort he raised his voice in the same old hymn, and
toward the close of the first verse, his immortal soul returned to the God he
glorified in song. What an effect that trooper’s song had on the other patients
in the hospital and to their dying day, they never forgot that old hymn. The
trooper was born and raised in the mountains of West Virginia, and probably he
first heard that hymn from his mother or at the church and Sunday school from
the old itinerant preachers who travelled the circuit before the days of war.
Mothers teach your children the songs of home and of your Christian faith, and
when they go out into this world the remembrance of them may oft keep them from
straying into forbidden paths.
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The other night the bank clerks in
Toronto held a meeting to form a union that might tend to better their
financial condition. Bank clerks are supposed to be young men of fair business
education and refinement – and to prepare for this costs time and money, even
after schooldays are ended. They are expected to dress decently and to lodge in
boarding houses of the better class. As a general thing, they are gentlemanly
in their habits and are expected to have the entrée of decent society. And all
this has to be done on a salary that a corporation laborer would turn up his
nose at. Being refined in his manner, the bank clerk is a sentimental fellow in
his way, but such a thing as falling in love with some sweet girl is out of the
question, for one of the rules o Canada banking-houses is that no clerk, under
any circumstances, is permitted to marry until he has reached a salary of
$1,000 a year. It does seem a little cheeky for a lot of bloated bondholders,
who are directors and managers; with marriageable daughters that mamma is
anxious to transfer to the head of a family, to pass such outrageous laws. It
is a crime against nature, and it is only a wonder that bank clerks are as good
and virtuous as they are. Is it because directors and managers think $1,000 and
over clerks are more honest than the young men on the $600 and $800 payroll?
Well, these young Toronto fellows would like an increase of salary so that they
can lay by a few dollars by the time they are financially ready to take a wife;
and this Muser hopes that they will be able to so forcibly present their claim
that the directors will add a trifle to each clerk’s pay check. It is well
enough for the directors and managers to lay by so much a year for an officer’s
pension fund, but not one in a hundred of the clerks are ever heard of as
pensioners. Long before they arrive at the pensionable age, they drop out of
banking and go into some business that their financial education has fitted
them for. And, by the way, go into any banking house in Hamilton, and you will
rarely see a grey-headed clerk. Then who are to get all of that pension money
we read of in the annual reports? One bank appropriates $100,000 a year of the
earnings of the stockholders’ money and lays it aside to pay some manager or
officer a big pension. Better pay the workers decent salaries and let them
provide for their future, the same as the common stockholder has to do. The
clerks in Hamilton also held a meeting this week, but they were cautious in
letting their wants be known. It was proposed to organize a special club, where
they would spend their evenings. Boys, keep out of the club business, and
whatever leisure hours you have, spend them in the society of good girls. By
and by the directors may modify that $1,000 salary rule; or, better still, they
will raise you up to that figure, and let your provide your own pension scheme.
