Pearl Button
Business Recalled By Fragments Found at Yaphank
By Helen M. Ewing
Middle Island Mail
September 9, 1936
Along the South Shore we
are accustomed to see oyster shells broken up and used in road-beds
or driveways. But a mound of white shell particles piled against a
building on Horse Block Road, east of the road from Bellport
railroad station to Coram, recently attracted our attention.
Inquiry disclosed the fact that the fragments were mother-of-pearl
shell which had come from the bottom of the ocean in the vicinity of
Australia.Truly they were a long way from home and our curiosity led
us to make further inquiry with the following result:
The story goes back before the Civil
War when Silas Lawless, father of Joseph, Albert, and Thomas Lawless
of Yaphank and Brookhaven, had a factory in New York, on the corner
of White and Center streets in the Harlem and New Haven freight
depot. This was the first company to make pearl goods in this
country and for a time the company manufactured three-quarters of
all the pearl goods in the whole country. Mother-of-pearl, from
pearl oysters, was extensively used then in furniture inlays, pistol
handles, pocket and table knife handles, opera glasses and fan
handles. The heavier parts of the shells were used for the making
of buttons. Buttons, which we now take for granted, have only been
in use about 100 years. (Previous to that time, thorns or wooden
pegs were used and later metal pins.) The first buttons were of
metal, ivory and horn, and pearl buttons were quite an innovation
when the Lawless Company started in business.
As the best shells for the making of
pearl goods were the Sydney shells, found off Thursday Island in the
Torrid Straits of Australia, one of the sons, Albert, went to
Australia and formed a partnership with Mr. Cleveland who lived in
Sydney. They purchased and operated ten luggers, from which divers
would descend 10 to 25 fathoms beneath the surface and collect the
pearl oysters from the ocean bottom. These oysters were sometimes
as large as 18 to 20 inches across and when the shell is open, in
order to catch food, the oyster is somewhat luminous and can easily
be seen by the diver. (Incidentally, the tentacles of the oyster
throw out about 99% of all that floats within the shell and it is
when a grain of sand or foreign matter gets below the point where
the oyster is fastened to the shell and the oyster cannot eject it,
that a pearl is formed. In order to relieve the irritation caused
by the foreign matter, the oyster coats the object with saliva, or
the same matter of which the inside of its shell is formed, and this
becomes the pearl or gem. Pearl fisheries depend more on the
mother-of-pearl for their revenue then on the pearls as there is not
enough of the latter found to pay for the labor of collecting the
mollusks.)
The divers are mostly Malays or
Japanese and they work six or eight months a year. At ten fathoms,
they can stay down an hour. At 20 to 25 fathoms, it is impossible
to stay down more than 5 or 6 minutes. Those who follow this
occupation are mostly fatalists, for of course there is often danger
that they might stay under water too long a time.
The luggers sailed into the
port of Sydney and during the voyage, the shells were opened, the
meat thrown to one side to be examined for pearls, and the shells
packed in hogsheads. At Sydney they were loaded on steamers which
carried them to London and then trans-shipped to New York. The
Lawless family sold out the Australian end of the business after a
few years, but continued to manufacture in New York.
In the early days of the pearl button
business, a workman would put a blank in a lathe, much the same as
wood turning. The tools were crude and three or four gross a day
was a good output. (Perhaps this is why “making buttons” used to be
synonymous with taking one’s time, for it was a long and tedious
process to make them by hand.) A workman received $2.00 a day for
plain buttons and consequently they were quite expensive. Later,
machines were invented and Joseph Lawless was the first to develop a
machine which would form the pattern of a button without any handy
work. The industry developed rapidly in this country (hitherto it
had been carried on in Germany, Austria, France and England) and
three or four hundred thousand people were employed in it. With the
new methods and machinery, a girl could turn 300 gross in six hours
and would earn $3, $4 and $5 a week. What would cost 50 cents to
manufacture 50 years ago, can now be done for one cent. American
methods have brought about the change, and the consequent reduction
in price.
About 45 years ago the Lawless company
though they could manufacture under less expense and without labor
trouble if they built a factory on some of their land on Long Island
of which they owned many acres. A factory northeast of the present
Bellport railroad station was the result, but it had since been torn
down. The expense of getting the raw materials out here and
delivering goods to the consumer, made it a losing proposition, and
it was given up. They leased a factory in Center Street, New York,
and were at that time (previous to 1890) the largest manufacturers
of buttons and pearl novelties in the country. Later, they built
their own factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
During the world war they arranged to
have part of the business carried on down here in the winter time,
in order to give employment to men who worked on farms in the
summer. It was then that the stone building in Yaphank, NY was used
and buttons cut out from oyster’s shells. This was given up in 1918
and three years ago, due to the change in business requirements,
etc., the company was dissolved. Raw materials out here and
delivering goods to the consumer, made it a losing proposition, and
it was given up.