The Omaha Daily Bee, Sept. 21, 1891, announced that a button factory had opened in Omaha. It would manufacture what were known as “pearl” buttons made from the shells of mollusks such as abalone, conch, or even fresh water clams and mussels. The factory was located at 1818 Williams Street and employed seven workmen. The article noted that England and Austria had been the world’s main producers of pearl buttons from sea shells harvested in the Malay Archipelago off the north coast of Australia. A decline in the Austrian button industry had induced many of its Bohemian craftsmen to move to the United States, some settling in Omaha.
What likely sparked the decline of European button manufacturing and the establishment of the Omaha factory was the 1890 McKinley Tariff authored by Ohio congressman and future president William McKinley. Taxes on imported goods were designed to offset the cheaper labor costs overseas and make American industry more competitive. Workers in button factories in Austria were paid 75 to 80 cents per day, while in Omaha in 1892 they earned $2 a day.
The process of making buttons was likely the same in Omaha as in Europe. A series of lathes cut out the buttons from the sea shells. Next they were shaped by chisels held against the surface while the button blanks were rotated. The buttons were then polished, and the buttonholes drilled by hand. After sorting by quality and size, the finished buttons were sewn on cards and boxed by women and girls. The Bee reported that Omaha dry goods jobbers Kilpatrick-Koch and M. E. Smith had given the factory “quite a large order.”
By July 1892, what is presumed to be the same factory, now called the Western Pearl Button Co. managed by Frank Kaspar, employed 25 button-makers and 12 women and girls to sort the buttons, sew them on cards and box them for shipping. The same July 10 Omaha Bee article mentioned, “There is another factory in Omaha turning out the same kind of goods.” This was likely what became the American Pearl Button Co. and listed in the Omaha city directory in 1895. On April 7, 1897, American Pearl advertised that it had 26 wagon
