Buttons, useful articles of wear, used as coat and dress fasteners or as mere ornaments, and made of bone, wood, metal, jet, papier maché, mother of pearl or glass. They are manufactured in various sizes, and sometimes covered with cloth or other material, and also made with and without shanks. Birmingham, England, is a great seat of their manufacture; while they are extensively turned out in factories in this country, in the different varieties of the button industry, there being to-day about 250 button-making factories in the United States, with a gross value-output of close upon $8,000,000. The process of manufacturing them is chiefly by stamping in the case of metal buttons; while the cast button is made in molds by pouring molten metal over them, the loop of wire which forms the shank being suspended in the process and pressed into the bottom of the button. Powdered steatite, saturated with soluble glass, is used for making shirt buttons in molds, the buttons being afterwards baked and polished. Other kinds of buttons are made of various composites, as well as of vegetable ivory and of the hoofs of cattle, boiled down and turned out in hydraulic presses of the various sizes and patterns.
