Humours of the Customs.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 26, 26 June 1912, Page 56

Humours of the Customs.

When the German tariffs were under discussion in the Reichstag that humorous .Socialist, Herr Bebel,-suggested that foreign orders conferred on German subjects should be treated as children’s boys and taxed accordingly. He meant it as a joke, but this excuse cannot, it seems, die ptrt forward on behalf of the Irene h Customs authorities, who, it is stated, have just ordained in ail seriousness that trunk and handbag locks, clasps, and other metallic fastenings in nickelled metals ehall be classified by their officers as “imitqXion jewellery,” and that umbrella tubes and ferrules shall come under the same schedule and be taxed of £5 per 100 kilos accordingly. The classification is almost as humorous as that made by the Cairo city Customs officer, who, when called upon to levy duty on the Ptolemy mummy, which now re.poses in the Cairo museum, decided that it must pay toll chargeable on salt fish! The Dingley Tariff was onee responsible for what was a minor tragedy. A haggis for the Burns celebration was detained at New York while the Customs officials tried to solve the problem of the duty leviable. Tn despair the President of the Burns Society instructed a sausage maker to provide the “chieftain of the pudding race.” The sausage maker added embellishments in the form of vegetables and enclosed the whole in a calico bag. The result was the president considered the only way to appease the shade of the poet was to resign. The Customs officials, it is said, never came to any decision as to wha't the haggis should be classed as for duty purposes, for whilst they were searching for precedents and arguing the point th? haggis defined itself as an intolerable nuisance, and was dealt with accordingly.