60 In the early 1900s, the pearl button industry gained traction, which had a tremendous impact on the entire state of Illinois.3 A button factory was established in Yorkville to compete with Muscatine for Fox River mussels in 1911. As a result, the increasing demand for buttons affected the harvest and use of mussels in the Fox River, where fishermen dug for mussel shells to sell to button factories. These shells that came out of the Fox River in Dundee, Illinois, sold for as high as $125 per ton, which furthered the process and rate at which the button industry started causing the overharvesting and declining population of the mussels.4 However, by 1947, the pearl button industry started to decline because of the mass production of plastic buttons and zippers, which were more efficient to make and sell in large quantities. The pearl button industry could not keep up to pace and became obsolete as a result. Despite the elimination of commercial harvest and the passage of the Clean Water Act in the 1970s, the abundance and species richness still declined between those intervening years due other factors remaining in the river such as dams.5 Starting around the same time as the pearl button industry in 1908, the pearl fever of Elgin, Illinois had clam diggers actively searching for freshwater pearls in the Fox River, where they would “[wander] the river banks[,] … wait until the river was low in the hot summer months, [and] then wade in until their feet touched a clam.”6 Consumers, such as jewelers and professional pearl buyers, incentivized this business model through making regular visits to the city to appraise and buy pearls. According to an article in 1911 from the Record, about $2 million worth of freshwater pearls were being harvested annually in Illinois.7 Combined with the pearl button industry, both factors 3 Howard Edlen, “History of the Pearl Button Business in Meredosia, Illinois” www.museum.state.il.us, accessed December 12, 2022, https://www.museum.state.il.us/RiverWeb/harvesting/harvest/mussels/industry/hedlen.html. 4 Howard Edlen, “History of Pearl Button Business.” 5 Robert W. Schanzle et al., “The Freshwater Mussels (Bivalvia: Unionidae) of the Fox River Basin, Illinois and Wisconsin,” Biological Notes ; No. 141, November 1, 2004, https://hdl.handle.net/2142/95902. 6 Alft, E. C. Elgin: Days Gone By. Carpentersville, Il: Crossroads Communications, 1992. 7 “When the Fox River Was Known for Its Pearls—and Pearl Buttons…,” historyonthefox, January 9, 2018, https://historyonthefox.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/when-the-fox-river-was-known-for-its-pearls-and-pearl-buttons/.
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