The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1909-03-13
MAIL SMUGGLERS FEMALE.
Watches in Wedding Cake, Dia-
monds In Books, Corsets by
the Halt Section.
New York Tribune

tNeW 1OTk Tribune.l
Too few people think il a crime To swim
Ole the customs. Too many citizens in this
era OF free thought consider il a meri-
torlous act to be classed with the neglect
10 pay rare on street car when forced
10 hang to q strap. For that reason many
bright and brainy persons think hard nov,
10 get goods from abroad without paving
toll to Uncle Sam. As most of the zI1c-
cessful operators in this line are women,
VINO nave 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 government
The avenues through the steamship pas
Senger route are pretty carefully guarded.
and as comparatively few people go
abroad the great mass of dweIlers in this
protected land are debarred from sharing
in the humorous little game of hide the
diamond or sumggle the silk. But there
IS another avenue that has been over
looked until recently. and this Is now be
ing USED enthusiastically by the anti-dutv
aggregation. 1t is the United States mai.
With the immense volume Cf foreign
mail delivered to this country il is mani
testify impossible to open and examine
every package that seems to contain news
papers or merely a bulky letter. to sec
whether or not some dutiable article Is
concealed therein So far as it is pos
sible. however, it is Done and the ad-
dTessee has to go to the postoffice and
pay DUTY on the amount at which the
dutiable article is appraised Common
sense has taught the astute American that
sealed letters are much more likely to
be passed through tinexamined than par
cells sent unsealed. II IS easy TO unite
? string and investigate the contents of
package. but to open all the letters that
come through the mail would be a stu
pendOus task II is assumed as a broad
guess that all the articles that are 5uti-
able viii come by package post. and be
cause of. this assumption many q small
article that would otherwise be taxed by
the customs officers gets through with
out toll.
The custom house experts at the post
office have their hands full checkmating
the clever moves Of those who are con-
stantly devising new ways TO disguise
dutiable things as innocent looking par
GELS
I'VE used to pass cakes through without
question" said one Of the examiners. TT
seemed too bad to lay hands on Christ
mas pudding sent by relatives in England
to some exile in this country. 1t also dis
officer to demOlish a section of wedding
cake that had been sent from the old
home In Germany TO Fritz III America So
we let these sacred things pass through
But one day we had an awakening. One
IF the customs men heard that neighbor
had obtained q new watch from abroad.
II had come through duty free, and the
gleeful girl who was wearing 1t could not
keep quiet about the clever way the post
office had been deluded. 1t seems the
watch had been baked right into a cake
and had come through without discovery.
Now. this forced us to take some step to
prevent a repetition of such smartness,
and ever after that we held on to all
ca Ses or puddings that came in packages
through the mail. A letter is sent to the
person 70 whom the package is addressed
and this person Gt is almost always wO-
mani has to come to the postoffice and
cut tine cake or slice the pudding right in
front of the custom officer. Do we catch
a Tartar occasionally? Well, yoA may
take il for granted that any one who
would try this trick is a Tartar to begin
with. and so we don't get off without a
scene when the cutting time comes.
a trick that fooled us for a time was
the sanding through the mail of one glove.
trifle creased, to give the idea that 1t
left II Europe by g tourist. With the
glove would come a letter to that eff
feet: 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 sus-
picIous So we held on to one of them.
and by the next mail there came another
glove from the same address to the same
person. The glove was the fellow to the
other. Then we got another left hand
glove and later the right hand glove TO
match It, The trick was simple and adj
mirable in its simplicity. Gloves were
being sent through in quantities, one at
a time In the same way We found that
shoes were being struggled. Same trick.
Sorry YOU went away and left one of
your shoes when packing up. Hope the
other one was in the trunk all right
But the qUeerest trick we exposed the
other day. wOman was accommodating
large stock of fancy corsets without
troubling about the duty that should have
been paid on them. We are all men mere
Perhaps if a woman had been on duty
the trick might have been discovered
sooner. The trick was to send half cor
set through the mail. We knew of no
rule about paying duty on half a corset
Il was easy to aulace the half and send
Ii along II appeared TO US to be mere
remnant OF the up-to-date woman's attire
and not important enough to consider as
dutiabie.
so we passed the half corset along and
thought no more of It. But half corssts
began TO drop in with all too great fire.
quency. IL looked as though corset REM
nants had suddenly attained considerable
i'm portance in some ones estimation. So
one of the men put IL up to his wife, and
she took something less than fraction
Of a second to puneture the scheme. The
half corset was useless in itself, but when
the other half arrived there was French
corset ready for wearing.
we find fine silks done up in I, OK