The Lerner test for identifying prohibited synthetic narcotics has created world-wide interest. Virtually every country in the world has written to the Customs Bureau requesting information on this process and asking for one of the small field kits with which the tests can be made.
Frequently the laboratories are able to give invaluable help to importers in protecting them from fraud and sometimes saving them from embarrassment. There was one case in which a curator of a museum vouched for the antiquity of a tapestry which he had imported for the museum from Europe. As an antiquity—that is, an article made before 1830—it would not have been subject to any tariff duty. The curator was quite insistent about the age of the tapestry. But laboratory experts discovered that the tapestry’s threads had been stained with coal tar dyes. Since coal tar dyes were not used before 1857, the tapestry obviously was not an antiquity. The curator was embarrassed over being proved wrong, but nevertheless he was grateful that the discovery had been made before the tapestry was hung in the museum.
In another case the laboratory experts were able to set at ease the mind of an importer of an extremely valuable gold, diamond, and ruby tiara which had been purchased as a museum piece. Even though the tiara was known to be very old, it was suspected that the piece had undergone major repairs. If this were true, it meant that duty would have to be paid on any substantial repairs to the import.
The tiara was taken to the New York laboratory. A chemist rubbed the tiara lightly with a very fine sandpaper to remove a few flecks of gold. These flecks were then analyzed by a spectrograph, which revealed that the gold contained the impurities commonly found in gold refined by antique methods. There was no need for the payment of any duty on the tiara.
The laboratory experts work in close cooperation with the Bureau’s enforcement division, and they never know when they may be called upon to don their detective hats. There was one case in which it was suspected that cattle were being smuggled from Canada into upper New York State. The laboratory supplied agents with a certain chemical which they took into Canada and, with the cooperation of Canadian law enforcement officers, secretly smeared on herds of cattle in the area where the smuggling had been taking place. When the chemical dried on the cattle, it left no visible trace.
Later the agents smeared a second chemical on cattle which were suspected of having been smuggled into New York State. No sooner was this done than large red blotches appeared on the cattle—irrefutable evidence that these animals had been smuggled in from Canada. This may have been the first time that science got into the business of combatting cattle rustling.
The Customs laboratories trace their beginning to 1848, when Congress wrote into law a requirement that Customs should examine all drugs, medicines, medicinal preparations, and chemical preparations used as medicine to determine their quality and purity. Standards of strength and purity were established. The analyzing was farmed out to chemists in commercial firms or to pharmacists and physicians.
Although this law was passed in 1848, it was not until 1880 that the Customs Bureau was authorized to employ its own chemist. By this time there was imperative need for more laboratory work to aid the Customs appraisers.
In the early 1880s the Bureau first began using instruments such as the polariscope to determine the actual strength of sugar being imported.
Old records show that chemists were added to the Customs staff at New York and San Francisco between 1880 and 1890. A Customs laboratory was established in Philadelphia in 1892 and in San Francisco in 1899. Despite the obvious value of their work, the chemists were not regarded very highly in the government service, and until 1910 their salaries were $1,200 a year—the same as that received by an ordinary clerk.