Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 233, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1915 — Fresh Water Pearls. [ARTICLE]

Fresh Water Pearls.

“You don't hear much about fresh water pearls,” said a Madison lane Jewelry dealer, “but we raise them in this country just the same, and you may be, surprised to know that thei* annual product runs up into the mfli lions —not rery far, of course, as do imported salt water pearls, but N far enough to reach with the pearl buttons made from the shells to a Talus of about $7,000,000. “These pearls come from the bivalve known as the mussel and there are several varieties. The great bulk of them come from the Mississippi river and its tributaries. The Mississippi valley pearl fisheries are not at all of the same class as their confreres of the Orient* and no poet has yet found any poetry In the prosaic day labor they perform dredging and wading and scraping for mussels. “Pearls have been found worth as much as $2,000 each, possibly more than that, but when ar fine large one' is found it is quietly slipped in the the salt water, higher priced importations, and Just what price it will bring then nobody knows but the man who sells it as imported, and be is not telling. “These Amerlean pearl fishers, however, keep at their work, dreaming always of making the great find, as the gold diggers do who starve and freeze, living on hope until they die In despair. It is rare even to find one worth SSO, but numerous small ones afe found, though in the final summing up of receipts the fishers get more for the humble shells from the button factories than they do for the pearls they seek in the shells. They make a fair living out of the shells as they never would out of the pearl, which contains a moral, if you, want to look at it”—New York Sun,