The difference, when translated into terms of a half-a-cent a pound import duty, didn't take long to run up into hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Carr's report, made after several months' investigating, cost a number of sugar samplers their jobs and brought the wrath of the government down upon the companies which had been responsible for the practice.
After such an exposure as this, you might think that the sugar people would have been content to take their legitimate profit and to pay the duty levied by law. But Carr had the idea that they would try to put into operation some other scheme for defrauding the Treasury and during years that followed he kept in close touch with the importing situation and the personnel of the men employed on the docks.
The active part he had played in the sugar-sampling exposure naturally prevented his active participation in any attempt to uncover the fraud from the inside, but it was the direct cause of his being summoned to Washington when a discharged official of one of the sugar companies filed a charge that the government was losing five hundred thousand dollars a year by the illicit operations at a single plant.
"Frankly, I haven't the slightest idea of how it's being done," confessed the official in question. "But I am certain that some kind of a swindle is being perpetrated on a large scale. Here's the proof!"
With that he produced two documents—one the bill of lading of the steamer Murbar, showing the amount of sugar on board when she cleared Java, and the other the official receipt, signed by a representative of the sugar company, for her cargo when she reached New York.
"As you will note," continued the informant, "the bill of lading clearly shows that the Murbar carried eleven million seven hundred thirty-four thousand six hundred eighty-seven pounds of raw sugar. Yet, when weighed under the supervision of the customhouse officials a few weeks later, the cargo consisted of only eleven million thirty-two thousand and sixteen pounds—a 'shrinkage' of seven hundred two thousand six hundred seventy-one pounds, about six per cent of the material shipment."
"And at the present import duty that would amount to about—"
"In the neighborhood of twelve thousand dollars loss on this ship alone," stated the former sugar official. "Allowing for the arrival of anywhere from fifty to a hundred ships a year, you can figure the annual deficit for yourself."
Carr whistled. He had rather prided himself upon uncovering the sampling frauds a few years previously, but this bade fair to be a far bigger case—one which would tax every atom of his ingenuity to uncover.
"How long has this been going on?" inquired the acting Secretary of the Treasury.