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German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#41

Post by chemicalsnakes »

ripe wrote: post #18
trevithick wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the dams, I recommend the book "Cadillac Desert" to anyone even remotely curious about the background and scale of water projects in the US. It's not boring despite the what the subject matter might suggest.

Yes, it's an outstanding book, well worth reading: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner, Penguin Books, 1986, 1993. A recent perspective on this excellent book by Ryan Cooper is also very good. He says that journalists in the 1970s and 80s were infected with Reaganite ideology and made some mistakes. Worth reading: https://prospect.org/2025/12/12/cadillac-desert-reconsidered.…

>Reisner [...] often relies on neoliberal economics

So, correct economics?

>[the] idea that public works projects should each pay for themselves individually is straight out of neoliberal dogma

I mean, not really; it's not an idea unique to neoliberalism. And if it were, that it is characteristic of neoliberalism does not constitute an argument against it.

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#42

Post by pixl97 »

RajT88 wrote: post #8
close04 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TLDR: Consequently many freshwater mussel species are now extinct The problem with the DR part of TLDR is that you miss a lot of detail. There are more factors than just the button industry. > To survive past the larvae stage, they must become parasites that attach themselves to fish. If the fish populations are declining, that oftentimes has an indirect effect on mussel abundance > the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers…

The river I live next to had the same thing happen. The mussel populations aren't what they once were (said to be hundreds per square meter back in the 1800's). There was also button factories along the river, and they briefly tried pearl farming. The big problem was pollution, dams, etc. as you say. The river is better now than it's been since I was born - and more dams are being removed year by year.

I lived right outside of Muscatine as a kid. When I was young the rivers were still muddy as hell all of the time. They passed some laws and the DNR started enforcing laws about runoff and water quality massively improved.

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#43

Post by felix-the-cat »

Some of this old stuff is really interesting - I used to live in Wisconsin and there was this place called “Crex Meadows” near my house which was a wildlife area but the name seemed so weird I looked it up and it used to be a grassland where the Crex carpet company farmed grass for making carpets. I had no idea they used to make carpet out of grass fibers.

Relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crex_Carpet_Company

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#44

Post by pimlottc »

bookofjoe wrote: post #16
pimlottc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DR?

This comment interests me. Over the 10 years I've frequented HN* regularly (usually multiple times daily), I too have been occasionally confounded by new-to-me abbreviations/acronyms, such that I've Googled them to find their meaning. I can't imagine asking the meaning of an such an unknown in a comment, for two reasons: 1. An answer depends on someone else's effort/time to furnish it. Why expect/hope someone's feeli…

The comment was edited, originally it said "The problem with the DR part is that you miss a lot of detail" and I thought it was perhaps some term of art regarding endangered species or conservation.

Anyhow, I believe it always adds value to bring clarifications "in-line" to the original thread so everyone reading it can gain the benefit of knowledge, instead of requiring every reader look up something on their own.

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#45

Post by shawn_w »

m3047 wrote: post #32
vitally3643 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An economic incentive to hunt a particular species does not result in a decrease in population. What you have instead is an economic incentive to breed large populations in uncontrolled conditions, likely on public land, which then get abandoned and/or released when you realize the economic incentive has made your invasive species problem far, far worse. This has happened many times throughout history.

Yes, for instance a bounty on rats leads to pet rats and tailless rats.

There's a simple solution to that. Tax the rat farms.

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#46

Post by oniony »

waltbosz wrote: post #2

I went to Muscatine, Iowa on a work trip once. There was a restaurant there called Button Factory. It was housed in a former button factory. Pretty old building. The bar top had an epoxy inlay with embedded buttons that were produced in the factory. The meal was pretty good. The restaurant closed in 2012.

Perhaps Joe stopped pushing that button with his left hand.

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#47

Post by hankbond »

Very well written article. Had a natural feel to it that was engaging and relaxing. The broader point of just having complete abandon for natural resources when manufacturing was certainly of the era (not that it has directionally changed much).

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#48

Post by im3w1l »

vitally3643 wrote: post #26
del82 wrote: post #10

I recently learned about using mussels for buttons when I visited the Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque, Iowa and have been wondering since: can Zebra Mussels be used for buttons? That would create (even more) economic incentive to go after them.

An economic incentive to hunt a particular species does not result in a decrease in population. What you have instead is an economic incentive to breed large populations in uncontrolled conditions, likely on public land, which then get abandoned and/or released when you realize the economic incentive has made your invasive species problem far, far worse. This has happened many times throughout history.

Animals have also been hunted to extinction though so I think it's more fair to say it can go either way.

Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

#50

Post by DiscourseFan »

shawn_w wrote: post #45
m3047 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for instance a bounty on rats leads to pet rats and tailless rats.

There's a simple solution to that. Tax the rat farms.

Now there are blackmarket rat farms
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