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Show Air Smuggling Is New Problem Customs Officers Puzzled to Find Way to Prevent Threatened Threat-ened Evil. HARD TO ENFORCE RULES Treasury Department Bombarded With Requests for Rulings Airplanes Air-planes and Hydroplanes Classed as Automobiles for Time Being. Washington. Smuggling by airplane sounds exrjiing, and is proving so to the customs division of the treasury, which is, so to speak, "up in the. air" about it. For the rime being, the department de-partment has ruled that airplanes and hydroplanes are automobiles so far as it is concerned, but it is well aware that calling a bird a wagon will not bring it down to earth where It can tell what kind of a bird it is. So far there has been no report of Illicit importations by air line, but expectation ex-pectation of such traffic. Is not denied. How to prevent it is a perplexing problem, prob-lem, growing more nnd more pressing nr. requests for rulings come from deputy dep-uty collectors ni$ our northern nnd southern borders. In the latter case they have bad to do with tobacco brought In from Cuba. by way of Key West anil Tampa. Here is an entirely new problem for the treasury to deal with in the collection col-lection of revenue through customs duties. du-ties. It is one to lie solved by treasury treas-ury regulations (born of decisions) for which no additional legislation is needed. need-ed. That it may be solved by a comprehensive com-prehensive order is almost despaired of because the best thought of the department, de-partment, although the need of deal-'ing deal-'ing Willi the situation has been long foreseen, has not been able to hit upon a met hod to close this door to secret importations thrown open by a modern mod-ern method of transportation most difficult, dif-ficult, if not impossible, to control. May Require Registration. It is believed that some scheme may be worked out whereby all airplanes leaving the country will be registered at the nearest custom house on the border, where a certificate will be issued is-sued to lie presented at any custom house in returning, as is done now in the case of automobiles. This would in most cases be a mere formality, but would permit search in suspicious cases and would tend to keep down smuggling. "Will be registered" is recognized rec-ognized as putting it strongly, as it is admitted it would be impossible to compel such registration of a machine miles above the clouds. The auto-mnbilist auto-mnbilist finds it best to comply because be-cause without his certificate to surrender surren-der on return he must prove his car is of American make or pay perhaps 4't per cent ad valorem duty. There would be no way to stop the flying machine, ma-chine, coming or going. Deputy Collector Haydeh ,. Moore, at San Juan, Porto Kico, seems to think he has them going, if not com ing To him airplanes are not automobiles auto-mobiles but seagoing vessels. Serious inquiries from business men nn the island have caused him to make this ruling : "In the absence of specific Instructions Instruc-tions from the department, I shall require re-quire airships clearing from I'orto liieo for foreign ports to he properly documented under the rules of the department de-partment of commerce in the same manner as seagoing vessels are regulated, regu-lated, entries and clearances to be made anil all dues paid at custom houses in districts where landings are effected or voyages started." This is very simple, hut airplanes are peculiar In their mode of travel. The colletcor dues not say how lie proposes pro-poses to enforce tills requirement, and has received suggestions from some of the I'orto Iticans that r.n aviation , school for customs men be established to bestow degrees of "sky inspector" and "custom ace." Service windows in the custom house also are urged bearing bear-ing the legends "Airships entered" and "airships cleared." Deputy Collector Bragassa, at Key j West, has his troubles over what is an airplane. He recently wrote to Collector Collec-tor Arthur G. Watson, at Tampa, that j it was almost a daily occurrence for airplanes to go over to Cuba and return. re-turn. One day his messenger boy overheard over-heard a man who had been a passen-gei passen-gei on a boat from Havana tell the difference between traveling that w-ay J and by airplane. lie said he bad just paid SJO duty on a lot of cijarettes, when the oilier day he had brought the j same amount home by air and did not 1 pay a cent. Collector Bragassa wanted want-ed to know, "How about it?" Collector Collec-tor Watson told him to talk to tne navy people about it. He replied: "I have conferred with Admiral Pecker, who has issued Instructions to the Key West air station that civilian passengers will not be permitted to be carried in airplanes unless permission has been granted by the customs officer offi-cer in charge of the port, and also have-issued have-issued instructions that all airplanes arriving at this port from foreign countries will comply with the navy's i end of the regulations in connection with the reporting to the customs officer of-ficer the arrival of American naval vessels from foreign ports." |