Part 28

However, the courts held that the import was only “one step short of the finished product” and that when the impurities were removed in a very simple process, then the end product was a vanillin conforming to the standards of the U.S.P. As such, it was held to be subject to the same tariff payment as other vanillin imports.

The case of the synthetic vanillin explains in a large measure why the turnover among scientists and technicians in the Customs laboratories is among the lowest in the entire Federal government. A day rarely passes in which they are not presented with a new and challenging problem--not unlike the solving of a mystery. There simply is no time to become bored.

Frequently these men must devise their own methods of examination and establish their own standards for a product simply because there is nothing in the book which they can use as a guide. Many new products have come into the markets in the past few years--particularly in the field of chemicals--which are not provided for in the law except in a vague, catch-all phrase “and not specially provided for.”

The laboratories never know what to expect next. This was the case when the New York laboratory received a sample of a shipment of artificial Christmas trees resembling small pine trees. The examiners at the pier who first inspected the trees were baffled as to how they should be classified and what the rate of duty on them should be. The trees were made from materials which the examiners could not identify. And identification had to be made before a rate of duty could be fixed.

One of the trees was sent to the Customs laboratory on Varick Street, where it was taken apart piece by piece. It was found that the base was made from pasteboard. The trunk was fashioned of wire and the bark from paper. But the artificial pine needles were discovered to be dyed goose feathers. Since the law holds that the duty must be paid on the “component material of chief value”--then the Christmas tree’s actual chief value was in the dyed goose feathers. Dyed goose feathers called for a duty of 20 per cent of their value on the market.

Frequently the laboratory workers find themselves in the role of a Sherlock Holmes--using their test tubes and their spectrometers and their diffractometers as tools to help track down criminals.

One day an employee on the New York piers noticed that an automobile which was to be loaded aboard a ship for Europe seemed to be heavier in the rear than in the front. The car was setting too low on its rear springs, although there was nothing in the trunk of the car to put any undue weight on the springs.

This fact was called to the attention of Customs officers, and they decided to examine the car. They went over it carefully and finally discovered a section behind the rear seat which appeared to have been tampered with. There were scratches on the metal which seemed to have been made only recently. A further examination disclosed a secret compartment built into the car, and when this was pried open, it was found to contain about $30,000 worth of gold bars. They were being smuggled out of the country.

The bars were taken to the New York laboratory for examination. There seemed to be no way to identify them because the serial numbers--which are stamped into each bar of gold and recorded by the government--had been hacked and gouged from the soft metal. But the laboratory discovered a method--still secret--by which they were able to read the numbers on each of the bars. This information was turned over to the Secret Service, and Secret Service agents were able to track down the man who had made the original purchase of the bars.

Part of the laboratories’ job is to watch for improper classification of imports by shippers who hope to slip them into the country under a lower rate of duty than the Tariff Act provides for. As aids in this work the chemists have spectrographs (used for the most part in analyzing metals), X-ray diffractometers, electrolytic machines and other instruments enabling them to break down and identify the component parts of materials brought into the country.

By use of the diffractometer and X-ray, the laboratories have been able to determine in innumerable cases that shipments have been improperly classified by the shippers either intentionally or unintentionally. At any rate, the shipments have been uniformly reclassified at higher rates of duty, saving the U.S. Treasury many thousands of dollars.

There is one case on record in which a diffractometer was credited with reversing a court decision. Before the diffractometer was installed in the New York laboratory, an importer brought into the country a shipment of material which he listed as duty-free zirconium oxide. A chemical analysis, while not very convincing, showed that the material was not zirconium oxide. But the method of testing was such that the importer successfully challenged the Customs finding and the Customs court ruled that the material should be admitted as zirconium oxide, free of duty.

However, the laboratory was not finished with this case. Soon after this decision a diffractometer was installed in the laboratory. Another analysis of the material was made. And the diffractometer revealed beyond the shadow of doubt that the material was not what the importer claimed. The crystals in the material showed that it was stabilized zirconium oxide, dutiable at 15 per cent of its value, rather than ordinary zirconium oxide, free of any duty. The result was that the diffractometer’s findings were accepted by the court and the original ruling in favor of the importer was reversed.

Sometimes the secretiveness of shippers poses an unusual problem. Such was the case when a Swedish manufacturer of homogenized ham-and-cheese spread decided to send his product into the American market. He would not disclose to Customs the recipe for this spread--obviously feeling that his trade secret might fall into the hands of a competitor.

Customs chemists were given the job of determining which of the materials in the spread was the major dutiable material. It was a tricky problem because both ham and cheese are of animal origin and consist of protein and fats. After two weeks the laboratory was able to report that the Swedish manufacturer’s product was primarily ham. Then there was no problem in fixing the tariff rate.

New York is the largest of the laboratories and tests about one-fourth of more than 120,000 samples which are examined each year. Boston is the next largest, and then comes New Orleans. Over the years each laboratory has become a specialist in certain examinations. Most of the wool entering the United States is examined in Boston. Chicago leads in the examinations of samples of ore, grain, and metals. New York does the great majority of testing of dyestuffs; and New Orleans has become a major center in the examination of narcotics, because of its geographic location near the Mexican border.

The laboratories are constantly seeking new and better ways of testing materials. A notable achievement in this field was made by Melvin Lerner, now the chief chemist in the Baltimore laboratory, when he developed an entirely new method for determining, easily and accurately, the opium content of any materials, in addition to identifying prohibited synthetic narcotics.

The process involves dissolving a small amount of the suspected powder in a mixture of trichloroethane, chloroform, nitric acid and phosphoric acid. If no heroin is present, the liquid will be colorless or have an apple-green hue. But if heroin is present, the liquid will range in color from light yellow to yellowish brown--the darker color indicating the powder is almost 100 per cent pure heroin. Distinctive coloring is produced also by the synthetics.

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.