The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1909-05-22
TRICKS IN SMUGGLING.


swindle the customs. For that rea-
son many bright and brainy persons
think hard how to get goods from
abroad without paying toll to Uncle
Sam. As most of the successful oper-
ators in this line are women, who
have more time to think about such
things than men, it can be imagined
that the customs officers have to be
eternally alert to protect the govern
ment.
The avenues through the steamship
passenger route are pretty carefully
guarded, and as comparatively few
people go abroad the great mass of
dwellers in this protected land are
debarred from sharing in the humor-
Gus little game Of hide the diamond
or smuggle the silk. But there is an
other avenue that is being used en-
Enthusiastically by the anti duty aggre-
cation. 1t is the United States mail.
With the immense volume of for
eign mail delivered to this country it
it is manifestly impossible to open
andexamine every package that seems
to contain newspapers or merely a
bulky letter to see whether or not
some dutiable article is concealed
therein. So far as it is possible, how
ever, it is done, and the addressee has
to go to the postoAice and pay duty
on the amount at which the dutiable
article is appraised.
The custom house experts at the
postofice have their hands full check
mating the clever moves of those who
are constantly devising new ways to
disguise dutiable things as innocent
looking parcels.
eve used to pass cakes through
without question:" said one of the ex-
aminers. "It seemed too bad to lay
hands on a Christmas pudding sent
by relatives in England to some exile
in this country. 1t also disturbed the
sentimental side of customs officer
to demolish a section of wedding cake
that had been sent from the old home
in Germany to Fritz in America. So
weletthese sacred dthings pass through.
One of the customs men heard that
neighbor had obtained new watch
from abroad. 1t had come through
duty free, and the gleeful girl who
was wearing it could not keep quiet
about the clever way the postoffice
had been deluded. 1t seems the
watch had been baked right into the
cake and had come through without
discovery. Now, this forced us to
take some step to prevent repetition
of such smartress, and ever after that
we held on to all cakes or puddings
that came il packages through the
mail. A letter is sent to the person
to whom the package is addressed,
and this person Git is almost alwaysa a
woman) has to come to the postofice
and cut the cake or slice the pudding
right in front of the customs officer.
Do we catch a Tartar occasionally?
We'll. yon may take it for granted that
any one who would try this trick IS
Tartar, to begin with, and so we don't
get off without scene when the cut
ting time comes.
GA trick that fooled us for time
was the sending through the mail of
one glove triAe creased to give the
idea that it was merely worn glove
that had been left in Europe by a
tourist. With the glove would come
a letter to that effect. You went
away without one of your gloves,
etc. OF course we passed it through
unsuspectingly. But we got so many
of these that it began to look suspi-
cious. So we held on to one of them,
and by the next mail there came an
other glove from the same address to
the same person. The glove was the
fellow to the other. Then we got an
other left hand glove and later the
right hand glove to match it. The
trick was simplicity. Gloves were
being sent through in quantities, one
at time.
"But the queerest trick we exposed
the other day. A woman was accumu-
lating large stock of fancy corsets
without troubling about the duty that
should have been paid on them. The
trick was to send half corset through
the mail. We knew of no rule about
paying duty on half corset. 1t ap.
peared to us to be a mere remnant OF
the up to date woman's attire and not
important enough to consider as duti-
able.
$50 we passed the half corset along
and thought no more of it. But half
corsets began to drop in with all too
great frequency. 1t looked as though
corset remnants had suddenly attained
considerable importance in some one S
estimation. So one of the men put
it up to his wife, and she took some
thing less than fraction of second
to puncture the scheme. The half
corset was useless in itself, but when
the other half arrived there was
French corset ready for wearing.
eve find fine silks done up in
packages of herbs, watches, diamond
| rings and bracelets concealed in the
leaves of books in holes cut for the
purpose and separate diamonds hid
den away in bottles of transparent
LIQUID where the gem is scarcely visi-
Bile. No doubt many dutiable articles
escape us, but we are getting wiser
every day to the tricks of the mail
smupglers. ~. Y. Tribune.