| Show I I I CUSTOM HOUSE INVESTIGATION r Witness Writes a Letter to Chairman Fairchild NEW YOKK June 28James Wilson of this city was recently a witness be fort the custom house investigatinc committee com-mittee but the feeling was that the evi dence he was allowed to give was not comprehensive enough He has written a letter to Chairman Fairchild of the investigating in-vestigating committee in which he says in part I do not feel that the proceedings of the committee were seriously intended to elicit all favors regarding the importations importa-tions and return of California Central bags The fraud is not in the appraiser but in the law of Congress in the McKinley act which calls upon the appraiser to distinguish between bags of foreign for-eign and domestic manufacture but it is impossible however preponderating pre-ponderating the balance of evidence may be to say absolutely where an individual indi-vidual bag is made and i seems that under the circumstances the appraiser cannot justly impose a penalty of duty but is bound to give the bag the benefit I of the doubt 1 Talk that the government has been defrauded of many thousands or millions of dollars is sheer nonsense This investigation inves-tigation was instituted by Collins a bagmaker whose brief you evidently accepted whole Now you do not appear to have asked Collins how it is that he was engaged so long in importing these bags himself without paying duty on them or why he was required to pay duty on importation of 70000 bags shipped him as California bags but which had never been in California at all and most of which were branded with the name of Arnold Brauss Co a firm of grain ica shippers in Buenos Ayres South Amer 11 have actual knowledge that for the last year Collins has been busy collecting I evidence to prove the foreign origin of most of these returned bags and yet within that time I have sold him many thousands of these bags all of which he entered free and in regard to which he has taken an oath at the customs house in New York that to the best of his knowledge and belief they were of American manufacture You evidently adopt his Collins theories with unquestioning faith and treat with slight consideration and scant courtesy those hal dozen othe witnesses most of whom are traders of much greater knowledge and wider experience than he and have apparently condemned as ignor nt and inefficient the New York exam nor and by implication all other exam ners of appraisers for these central bags are passed free through every customhouse custom-house from Boston to New Orleans |
