The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-05-09
USING MAILS
FOR SMUGGLING
Clever Schemes to Evade the
Payment of Duty on
Imports.


the opium prohibition law went into
effect here, but as yet no big arrests |
have been made for attempts at SNUG
Cling The customs authorities are
none the less watchful on account of
the apparent calm, and are keeping
the closest kind of look -out for any
attempts to smuggle the DOPE into
Honolulu
A man closely in touch with China
town affairs said the other day that
the Chinese seemed not to be lacking
in opium with which to hit the pipe
as of old. He ventured the opinion
that the drug was being Struggled into
the ISLANDS by encasing it in packages
of mail stuff to all outward appearances
having innocent contents. Numerous
schemes have been worked in the past,
but it is understood that no one has
in the past been caught here using the
United States mails.
How successfully Uncle Sam has
been swindled by use of the mails on
the Atlantic Coast is shown in the
following article, clipped from the New
York Tribune:
The custom house experts at the
postoffice 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.
sfWe used to pass cakes through
without question, said one of the ex-
aminers. cit 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 SEN
timental side of a customs officer to
demolish a section of wedding cake
| that had been sent from the old home
| in Germany to Fritz in America. So
we let these sacred things pass through,
| But one day we had an awakening.
! One of the customs men heard that a
neighbor had obtained a new watch
! from abroad. 1t had come through
| duty free, and the gleeful girl who was
| wearing it could rot keep quiet about
| the clever way the postoffiee 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
| A repetition of such smartness, ana
| ever after that we held on to all cakes
| or buildings that came IN packages
| through the mail A letter is sent to
the person to whom the package is
addressed, and this person at IS almost
always woman) has to come to the
| nostoffice and cut the cake or silce
| the pudding right in front OF the Gus
| toms officer. Do we catch Tartar
occasionally Well, you may take It
for granted that any one who would
try this trick is Tartar, to begin
with. and so we don get off without
| scene when the cutting time comes.
| "A trick that fooled US for time
| was the sending through the mail OF
| one glove a trifie creased to give the
! idea that it was merely a worn glove
! that had been left in Europe py d
| tourist With the glove would come
| letter to that effect, You went away
| without one of your gloves ETC. oI
| course we passed it through unsus-
| pectingly. But we got so many OF
these that it began to look suspicious.
| So we held on to one of them, ana py
| the next mail there came another glove
| from the same address to the same
| person The glove was the fellow 10
| the other Then we got another IeIt-
! hand glove and later the right-hano
| glove to match it. The trick was SIM
| nile and admirable in its simplicity.
| Gloves were being sent through IN
| quantities, one at time
ri,,ly
| the other day A woman was accu-
mulating a large stock of fancy cor
sets 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 a cor
/ set 1t appeared to US to be mere
remnant of the up-to-date woman at
| tire and not important enough to con-
slider as dutiable.
so we passed the half corset along
| and thought no more of 1t. But ha4t
| corsets began to drop in with all TOO
great frequency. 1t looked as though
corset remnants had suddenly attained
| considerable importance in someone
| estimation So one of the men put II
ND to his wife, and she took some
thing less than a fraction of a 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.
| I'VE find fine silks done up in pack
ages of herbs, watches. diamond rings
] and bracelets concealed in the leaves
! of books in holes cut for the purpose,
| and separate diamonds hidden away
| in bottles of transparent liquid where
| the gem is scarcely visible. No doubt
| many dutiabIe articles escape us, but
we are getting wiser every day TO the
tricks of the mail smugglers.'
VESSELS In PORT.
| fAruy and Navy.)