Boost Bigger, Beautiful Bloomington! C&A Shop Expansion Fund Button, 1910

The “Page from Our Past” column in Sunday March 6, 2016 Pantagraph told how area residents raised more than $165,000 in the spring of 1910 to expand the Chicago & Alton Railroad Shops on Bloomington’s west side.Buttons like this one, mentioned in the column, were sold to help raise funds. The button’s reverse side tells us it comes from famed button manufacturer Whitehead & Hoag Co. of Newark, NJ. As with most products manufactured in the U.S. at this time, it also had a “union label” indicating it was made by union labor. In this instance it’s stamped “Allied Printing Trades Council.”Read article here: www.pantagraph.com/news/local/pfop-fund-drive-kept-c-a-sh