BOEPPLE, John

John Boepple established the clam shell button industry along the Mississippi River.

BOEPPLE, John. (Hamburg, Germany, 1854--Muscatine, IA, Jan. 1912). Boepple learned the family business of manufacturing buttons from horn, shell or other materials in Germany. (1) When tariffs put him out of business, he traveled to the United States for find cheaper shell. In 1887 after several attempts in other rivers, the MUSSELS in the MISSISSIPPI RIVER near Muscatine, Iowa. (2) These offered, at half the cost, as much luster as the more expensive ocean clam shells then used to make buttons.

In 1890 when he was ready to open his business, the McKinley Tariff had made imported ocean shell too expensive for buttons. (3) His plans to use shell from the Mississippi suddenly seemed possible. By 1897, three hundred people were fishing for mussels between Burlington and Clinton. (4) In that year, Boepple, considered an authority on pearl button manufacturing in the United States, was asked to testify before the House of Representative's Ways and Means Committee. He used the opportunity to support the Dingley Bill which protected American pearl button manufacturers. (5) With this support, button factories opened from St. Paul, Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana. Muscatine alone had fifty-three button-cutting shops using over 3,500 tons of shell annually. (6) Boepple offered in 1899 to bring his company to Dubuque if the city would reimburse his moving expense. This, however, never occurred. Instead the IROQUOIS BUTTON MANUFACTURERS opened its business.

Driven from the company he started, Boepple became a buyer of shells for other companies. While visiting Dubuque in 1902, he expressed his alarm at the detrimental effects the industry was having on the supply of mussels in the river. In 1910 he began work for the Fairport Biological Station founded by Congress in 1908 to study ways of re-establishing the population of mussels. (7) Ironically, Boepple later cut his foot on a piece of clam shell and died from the resulting infection. (8)

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Sources:

1. "John Boepple: Father of Muscatine's Pearl Button Industry," http://helpdesk.muscatine.k12.ia.us/pearlbuttons/p2.htm

2. Hudson, David; Bergman, Marvin; Horton, Loren. The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008 p. 53

2. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. "Founder of Button Industry Succumbs at Local Hospital," Muscatine (Iowa) Journal, June 31, 1912, p. 4 http://iagenweb.org/muscatine/articles/jfboepple.htm

6. Hudson, The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa, p. 53

7. "The Pearl Button Story--Iowa Pathways," http://www.iptv.org/iowapathways/mypath.cfm?ounid=ob_000031

8. Hudson, The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa, p. 54