The examiner who inspected the imported miniatures classified them as “toys”—and as such subject to duty of 50 per cent of their value. In the Tariff Act of 1930, Congress had described a toy as “an article chiefly used for the amusement of children, whether or not also suitable for physical exercise or for mental development.”
The ruling brought a pained cry from miniature railroad hobbyists across the country.
Toys, indeed! The hobbyists were outraged that this import should be put in the same category with playthings and that anyone should have the affrontery to think that such railroad equipment—even though Lilliputian in size—could be put together, and operated, by a mere child.
When the Collector at the Port of New York supported the ruling of the appraiser that the miniature railroad equipment should be classed as toys, the ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Customs. And when the case came to trial the importer had behind him ranks of witnesses from all walks of life ready to dispute the government’s description of the equipment: dentists, technical consultants, salesmen in various lines of business, doctors, lawyers, editors, publishers, and writers.
One after another, the witnesses took the witness chair to deride this nonsense that the miniature trains were made “for the amusement of children.” They gave technical testimony on the operation of these miniatures to prove that no child could be trusted with them and in fact could not operate them.
To prove this point one witness testified, “It requires a knowledge of electricity and requires a thorough understanding of how the trains operate. For example, our accessories all operate on alternating current; our trains run on direct current. It is necessary to know the two types of current which our power-packs provide to connect up the wires correctly. In the case of the alternating current, they have two leads; one would be a common terminal, connecting all the different accessories and switches, and another would be a specific one which would go to each individual switch.... The locomotive can also be operated from an overhead wire with pantographs they have located on the roof. This makes it possible to operate two trains on the same track under independent control. To do this, it is necessary to set up a catenary system, which is an overhead wire system, such as the Pennsylvania and New Haven Railroad use in this area. This, naturally, requires wiring.”
The importer insisted that the miniatures should not be classified as toys but should be classified as electrical equipment subject to a lower rate of duty.
Under this barrage of expert testimony from adults who play with small trains, the court overruled the Collector. The court held that the model railroad sets were not “toys,” because they were used chiefly by adults or by grown-up children and that they “do not come within the legal meaning of the word toy.”
In years past, Customs officials tried to establish a detailed classification system in which the examiner could refer to a given page in a book and quickly come up with the answer as to classification and duty of any item. But the system broke down under the weight of a vast number of new products arriving on the market. Discussing this effort a Customs Bureau official said: “On tariff classification, a number of people, who call up and ask for rates, think there is a detailed, logical breakdown and that we just thumb through a book and come up with an answer. To someone who hasn’t worked with classification, that seems like the way to do it. That is the way the old-timers used to try to classify. They used to try to set up categories with a place for everything, and everything in its place. But every time anyone set up one of these classification systems, along would come some new item which didn’t fit anywhere. So the present tendency in classification systems is to set up a specific category for the more important items, and then to set up what might be called a basket category to catch everything else.”
The impossibility of achieving an easy index for classifying imports was illustrated in recent years when a machine arrived from Europe described by the importer as “printing machinery.”