Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1898 — Buttons. [ARTICLE]

Buttons.

It is only in comparatively modern times that buttons have been utilized as fasteners. The Greeks and Romans knew nothing of them, and, though they presented themselves as ornaments in the fourteenth century, but-ton-holes were still an undreamed-of possibility. It was not until nearly the middle of the last century that the manufacture of steel buttons was entered upon at the Soho works in Birmingham, England. Then, on the accession of George 111., gilt buttons appeared and became quite the vogue. But it was reserved for the artisans of our day to make these useful fasteners in the, greatest variety at marvelously low' prices and out of all sorts of material, even to the seemingly impossible po-i tato.