The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 6, 1903, Page 12

THE SUNDAY CALL. . A $100000 NEKIACF OF AMERICAN DEARLS THE BLACK RIVER OF ARKANSAS BEING SWEPT OF CLAM\S $ 2000000 WORTH ALREADY TAKEN OUT, B e ere o 2 T R S S T4 S .o cascen o0 £2,00,000 worth of pearls e been taken from fhe anck Ti¥we, 45 4 AR of the pear! fever in about svery State and the Inhabitants there- of the Union. The first large ::;rlu"":: abouts have been made wealthy A necklace composed of more large pearls than ;?“zndh x;r;l:l.l e::x.nrzr;"lv.:o:!c had Jf o but the river now § clean of wealth any pearl necklace ever seen in the United . 1557, It welghed ninety-thres grains, and &s whistle: pearik there is done. States will leave New York this week for Paris. Wwas s0ld by Tiffany & Co. to the Em- ¥ rests on the sandbars that There it will be soid for $100,000. From the press Eugente. " ross the bottom of the stream French capital it will probably be sent to India and drilled. Then it will The one pearl, however, was practically ke the rungs of a giant ladder be brought back to the United States with an additional $100,000 tacked on the limit to the New Jersey flelds, though some smaller ones were afterward found in that State. Then occurred at broken intervals, from 1360 till 1897, excitement dve to the discovery of the gem in Ohlo, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arkansas, along the Mississippl Valley and even up into New England and New York State. Nomne of these so-called discoveries ever pan- ned out, and after a brief local excite- ment the bubble invariably burst. In the Mississipp! section, however, there was always a well grounded feeling that pearls ‘were plentiful there. Until the Black River gems began to be put into circulation the American variety had never borne much of a reputation d the popular prejudice against them has not yet been entirely dissipated. As the Arkansas gems found their way to Paris, however it was seen that they compared favorably with the famed Ori- ental variety. Indeed, in some few cases they excelled. And since then the Euro- pean dealer has been quick to take ad- vantage of the low price. He will purchase the domestio product 2t a ridiculously low figure and send them to India, where they are drilled and re- turned again to Parls and stamped as Oriental pearls. Being thus classified, it was easy to pass them on Americans trav- eling abroad at exorbitant prices. Dves the Black River is true of all the pearl he Mississipp! Valley there is dying, and ns annually to the on and a livelthood to s of dealers in New York is entirely dead its en by a drama- could do justice to the price and sold to a wealthy A nerican. That is the way they do things in Europe, and it Is a commercial feature the value of which has not yet been learned by the otherwise shrewd American. It has long been a popular concep.ion, fostered by jewelers, that the ¥ Oriental pearl is the only kind worth having. They are deceived. Pearls § are dally coming into the United States from Paris and London that were found in the Black and White rivers of Arkansas and in the Mississippl. They go to Paris, which is the Europ.an market for pearls, and are sent from Paris to India. They are drilied in that faraway country, not be- cause the driliing {s any better there or done more cheaply, indeed in many cases it is not so cheap, but because India Is a good place from which to have them billed back to London and the United States. It Is a fact, which is dally becoming of more interest to pearl importers and domestio pearl dealers, that the largest pearls are found in the United States. The necklace In question, although con.a ning forty-one welghs 1935 grains, or an average of 47.2 grains per pearl. All the pearls in the string have been maiched as to size, color and luster, and it required more than four years' time on the part of a pearl expert to make the collection and assort them. Three of the pearls in the necklace were purchased for $10,000 each. Nothing like it has ever been seen by the New York pearl dealers. hor and romance of its exist- ence and the pathos of its ending. try where $i6 a month for a thousands have Mort- developed whole communities and counties jumped to & place of pre-eminence In the social, political and commercial life of the State #nd section. This is particularly true of Arkansas, Wisconsin and lowa. The preservation of the clam, the GASOLINE, DREDGING: LADLNCEL \ TOWING DARGE — o == — e === o WHITE CLAMMERS NEGOTIATING— ” WITH A LOCAL bU\’}‘—L_{\ ] AND STORE. BINTI @LAE:&< TRIVER— source from which came all this wealth, of the richest pearl flelds of the New atus overboard and allows the boat to New York importers have been large buy- has n y sregarded. The World. More than three-fourths of the slowly drift down stream. A‘;t:'hnumaf- ers oL;hm pearls, believing them to be economic sense is lacking. Pearling has entire output to-day s found within a ous prongs come in contact with the open Oriental. s bocn carried on without method of res- radius of :Dhlrly suiléa ot there: 1t'3ai06 shells, the latter quickly close on them Domestic deajers in New York have #on; there is no law to regulate it. Any market for pe: one at any time may fish as many clams River, which from the water as he likes without regard of the best fc to e size, t Is found in the White producing practically all nd south of Prairie du spparatus he uses or the Chien. The products of the fisheries have Congress has tried to built its banks, lald out its streets and ures of States made wealthy its inhabitants. All the and retain a tight hold. After drifting a seen American pearls placed on display short distance the dredge is drawn in by for sale In some of the big jewelry stores meuns of a rope attached and the clams while the owners of the stores themselves removed from the prongs, great force thought they were the genulne Orfental. gometimes being required to dislodge The dealer would know for a fact, be- them. cause he would recognize some of the es regulating t avall ¥ come th clams. y 2 nacreous substance of sand that gets into are of all sizes and are usually about man's palm. The shell is ck and rough. They are eties of river bottoms d to hard, white sand in all depths of water. it of the pear] country is large; it takes in the Mississipp! River from La 5., to New Orleans and reaches by-streams and tributaries of er for hundreds of miles. this territory is divided into s; each section has its market center and aron it are clustered the - The northern center hien, Wis. This center ris and is the seat rritory around. All pearls elong the Mississippi River from La Iowa, are brought I and market New York and Chicago du Chien and the valuable pearis from a song. Afterward in ris and London these immense prices Because of this ded method of i richest The Government to do so, but success and local buyers report the selling of pearls in the local t a pearl that sells on the 0 or 52000 will bring when brought to New York and “touched up” from $5000 to $12,000 nothing like a correct estimate can be made. Mzaurice Brower, one of the largest buy- ers the jocal markets, declared that the total production for 1801, which was the best year in the record of the indus- try, was more than $1.50000. Because of the falling off of the clam supply he sald not more than 350000 or $600,000 worth were found in 1902, and, according to pres- ent indications, 1%3 would not produce much more than half that amount. The other pearl center in the United Btates is at Newport, Ark. This city, which has been lifted from obscurity by the industry, is situated in the very heart o products of the Black River, the richest pearl river at one time in the United States, have passed through it. Pearling is strongly individualized. The method is crude and has changed little for centuries. It is usually carried on by two men in & skiff, with the aid of tongs or shoulder rakes. The tongs are about seven or eight feet long and are ope- rated like oyster tongs. The fisherman gropes along the bottom of the stream with them, pulling up wnatever gets into them. The rake is operated in much the same way. The instrument is something like an ordinary garden rake, only larger and has a longer handle. A wire screen from the top of the rake prongs is attached to the handle, forming a sort of scoop. The rake is dragged along the ground, catching clams and other things. When it is full it is pulled to the surface and its contents dumped into the skiff. Both of the methods are extremely laborfous ana can only be em- ployed where the water is shallow and where the clams are found in thick beds. A much easier way to gather the clams, and one that is in more favor with the Mississippi fishermen than with the Ar- kansas pearl hunter, is to fish for them with “erowfoot” hooks. These hooks are made with stout wire, small chalns and a hollow tube rod. The wire is bent into eight hooks and attached to the small chains in such a way that the prongs of the hooks are at right angles to each other. The chains are then fastened to the rod, which is either seven or eight feet long, at regular distances apart. The number of hooks to be attached depends upon the length of the rod. A seven-foot rod, with four hooks on each chain, the chains being six inches apart, would have fifty- six hooks. One fisherman in a boat can operate two of these. The apparatus depends for its action on the habits of the clams, or “mussels,” as they are called. They rest on the bot- tom of the stream partly buried in the mud or sand, with the free margin of their shells turned upstream, and with their shells separated to admit the wa- ter. When touched they quickly close their shel], and if a foreign body is inter- posed between the valves it is tightly grasped and retained. After rowing out into the stream the fisherman throws his “‘crowfoot” appar- | dating In order to facilitate the handling of the crowfoot the fishermen fasten two up- right forks on each side of the boat, on which the dredge rod rests, the hooks awinging freely. While the clams are being taken from the hooks, the other is being dragged and is ready to be hauled in by the time the first is stripped. Often when the clams are abundant every hook will have one on it, and two or three and sometimes four are fse- quently caught on one prong. When the beds are compact one man can take 300 to 1000 pounds of mussels in a day, and a case is reported where 2200 pounds were obtained by one man in ten hours. The average daily catch, however, is about 600 pounds. ‘When a boatload of clams has been ob- tained or when night comes the fisherman rows ashore and dumps his catch into bins bullt on the bank of the stream. After he has obtalned a sufficlent number of ghells, or when the weather is stormy and disagreeable on the river, he bolls them out. This Is done by shoveling them into a large metal boller and bullding a fire beneath. The bolling out process requires only a short time and is for the purpose of open- ing the clams so that the pearls may be found. When they are thoroughly cooked the shells spring open and expose the clam. The pearl is found in the muscle of the clam or between it and the shell. Of- ten times it is attached to the shell, but very frequently it is not, and great care is required to see that it is not lost in the process of bolling and assorting. The water in which they are boiled is carefully strained, and all the meaty parts of the ciam are pinched to see that a pearl is not missed. Although extremely commonplace in de- tall, the opening of a shell is attended with great emotions. Any one of the pile of clams before the pearler may contain 8 fortune for him. As he reaches for one after another of the bivalves hope bobs again into his heart, and as his hard, horny hand closes over the shell prepara- tory to opening it he feels a little thrill and his blood goes a little faster through his veins. Pearling as an industry in the United 1 that time there had been local outbreaks very pearls he had so.d to a Parls mer- chant months before. Arkansas pearls are as a general thing much larger than the Oriental specimen, and while they will not run as well as & lot or “paper,” some few gems are supe- rior In color, luster and size. Mississippt pearls are poorer in quality and size than the Southern or Arkansas gems, and are not found as plentifully. Meanwhile some few rich discoveries are being made in the Cumberland River, in the Kentucky and in the Ohlo, which hitherto have been very backward in this respect. Undoubtedly the rivers of the Mississippt Valley will continue to pro- duce pearls for centuries to come, but they will turn out such poor specimens and they will be so few that fishing for them can hardly be called an industry. And unless something In the way of leg- islation is done very soon the present in- dustry will turn out to be a bubble simi. lar to all of those that have gone before. —— Literary Furor? Well Rather! E.W.TOWNSEND the Famous Author of Chimmie Fadden Will MaKke His Debutasa Writer in Che Sunday Call September 20. e e ————————