HOW A BONE BUTTON IS MADE.
FROM human bones?—No. From ivory?—No. From bone of dog or cattle?—No. The other day (writes a correspondent) I happened to call on Mr. Church, who is master of a small bone button factory in Birmingham, and was greatly interested in seeing a tailor's bone button made, just such a one as you would find on your ulster or a tweed coat. It was a queer little factory, made out of two or three cottages rolled into one. First of all, I was introduced to the raw material, which lay on the floor of a dark and dingy little workshop, in which a solitary workman was standing at his bench. "There," said Mr. Church, pointing to what I took to be potatoes, "there you see what we call vegetable ivory. It comes from South America, and grows in clusters of half a dozen nuts. That is the first state of the button." We then went up to the workman who was cutting up the kernels of the nuts at a swiftly revolving circular saw, an operation requiring great dexterity, for a slip might cost him a finger. This is the first process. The kernel is easily extracted, the shell in which it is inclosed being very thin and fragile. Although the kernel is a nut, it would take a very strong pair of jaws to crack it, and the teeth cannot touch it. The little white slabs that are cut out by the saws are taken to the next department, where the button is really formed in the series of lathes through which it is passed. The tool maker, whose office is very important, works at one end of the room. The first lathe cuts out the button with the desired circumference, regulating by a series of gauges, the work being passed on to the others for the rim, and so on. Two women were drilling the four holes of the buttons, this being done by taking up each one and subjecting it to the action of the four-pronged horizontal drills, doing their work with remarkable deftness and rapidity. The button, so far as its form goes, is finished. It now remains to do the polishing and dyeing. In another room are half a dozen hexagonal boxes revolving in an atmosphere of dust. They contain the buttons, which are now being polished by the action of some hard powder, which is placed with them in the boxes. There is a secret in every trade, and I fancy that the contents of the mixture with which the buttons are eventually stained are not divulged to the world. Down below I was taken to another room, in which there were scores of tins containing dye, and many buckets holding chemical solutions. When the buttons are ready for receiving the dye, they are placed on a tin tray, holding, I think, a gross. The dye is then blown onto them by a spray, which causes the liquid to fall very naturally. The trays are then put into a gas-heating oven, and the buttons are afterwards put on the cards ready for the market. Such is the interesting history of a bone button, one of the many wonders of Birmingham, that town of magicians.—Pall Mall Gazette.