To illustrate the nicety and intricacies that have grown around this business, take fabrics. The duty on silk goods and that on cotton goods are different. In the case of mixed, silk and cotton, it is, of course, different still. Then, whether the goods be silk or cotton, or mixed, the duty is calculated by a double standard—so much per square yard, and so much according to its fineness and weight. They count the threads of warp and woof in a square inch, and charge duty accordingly. If there are two hundred threads to the inch the fabric must pay a duty of, say, thirty-five per cent. ad valorem, if it cost over twenty-five cents per yard; while on another piece counting two hundred and one threads to the inch the duty shall be six and a half cents per square yard and fifteen per cent. of its cost. A single thread more or less may change the duty. Then there is all the complication of fixing the value of goods. I don’t suppose there is a farmer in the United States who can ascertain by any amount of figuring what it costs him to raise a pound of wool; yet the customs officers must fix the cost for all wool that is imported. So of all other products on which ad valorem duty is levied. Congress two years ago made a change in the basis of valuation, by decreeing that the value of the package in which goods are imported, the fees of brokers and other middlemen in the country where the goods were bought, and the cost of transporting them from points inland abroad to the seaboard, should not be counted in the value of the goods. All these items had before to be included in the appraisement. The fine distinctions and the contested points in fixing duties are innumerable. If any of them seem absurd and needlessly exact, you must remember that every one of them has been fought over between government and importers, between foreign and American dealers, and between rival importers, and has been established by experience as the best adjustment of all conflicting interests. For the tariff system is the growth of centuries. We inherited its leading features from England’s protective system—what time that, instead of free trade, was her better policy—and have gradually modified and expanded it to suit the exigencies of our own national growth. Each item in it is the record of more than fiscal economy. It measures the government’s efforts, as well to defeat the devices of smugglers and the designs of foreign producers as to raise its own revenues. “As the laws of nations are the crystallizations of its historical experiences, so the customs regulations of a people are the residual crystallization of its commercial relations with foreigners, its efforts at industrial development and self-preservation, and its bitter acquaintance with greed, guile and guilt.”[B]
The country’s acquaintance with greed, guile and guilt does not stop at such manifestations of human nature in those who seek to evade the payment of duties, either. It has to protect itself at the same time against the dishonesty and incapacity of its own servants. The customs system is therefore one of checks and balances to secure (1) the impartial and rigorous collection of all duties; (2) the prevention of mistakes in accounts; (3) the prevention of frauds and peculations, both inside and outside the custom houses. To secure all these the system of book-keeping and business detail is grown wonderfully complex and ingenious. The work is divided into three departments, or bureaus, each under the head of its official, all separate and distinct from one another, all under the jurisdiction of the Collector of Customs, and yet each official having his prerogatives and duties which the Collector can not interfere with. Each department revises the work of the others and tests accuracy and fidelity therein.
The Collector’s duties are to see that all the departments do theirs.
The Surveyor of the Port has charge of all outside matters. He is the eye of the Custom House. He is its right hand, which is laid upon a vessel, its passengers and cargo as soon as they enter the Narrows, and never taken off until all dues and requirements of the government are paid and fulfilled.
The Appraiser is to inspect, value, and catalogue all merchandise, and apportion the duties thereon.
The Naval Officer is to revise the work of all the others, and correct errors and neglects, but he has nothing to do with the machinery of collection.
To insure greater correctness there is a reviser of the revisers, who about a year after the clearance of a cargo takes all the papers connected with it, computes, compares and checks them off, and ascertains what has become of all the goods invoiced.
One would suppose that after a ship and its invoices had run the gauntlet of all these lynx-eyed officials, and the accounts had been cast in half a dozen different ways, and the whole affair probed, and pried open, and pried into, and taken to pieces and put together again in different ways, errors and frauds would be impossible. Importers evidently have not such faith in the perfection and inevitableness of the system, for appeals from the demands of the custom house are frequent, and upward of five hundred suits in a year are brought in court against the collector.
The best way to get a slight comprehension of the way this labyrinthine business is done is to go through it once, in fancy. Say you are a merchant traveling in Europe, and keeping an eye on the main chance by buying a stock of silks, woolens, and fancy goods; also dresses, gloves, and “knick-knacks,” for gifts. When the former are ready to be shipped you have three invoices made and presented to the United States Consul of the port of shipment, for him to revise and approve as correct descriptions of the goods. One of these invoices he keeps, one he mails to the Collector of Customs at New York, and one he gives the owner or consignee of the goods. If on opening the consignment in New York the inspector find this invoice does not correspond with the goods, it must be returned to the consul for correction. Thus early in the transaction do the safeguards begin.
Arrived in port, the vessel is boarded by inspectors who take from the master the ship’s manifest and the other papers, and seal up the hatchways, one remaining in charge of the ship while another takes duplicates of the papers to the collector. The master of the vessel also proceeds to the custom house and submits his papers, which convey a complete history and description of his vessel, its voyage, passengers, crew, cargo, stores, etc., etc. There are in some cases port dues and other charges against the vessel for him to pay. His statement includes a schedule of the number, nature, contents, consignees’ names and residences, and markings and numbers of your packages of goods, and of all others in the cargo. All this he vouches for under oath. Thus, to begin with, the government has three accounts of the cargo. The master is then given a permit to land his cargo, still under surveillance of the inspector.