Smuggler Nation (69 page)

7
. George F. Howe, “The New York Custom-House Controversy, 1877–1879,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
18, no. 3 (December 1931): 350.

8
. The information on seizures, indictments, fines, and penalties is drawn from Andrew Wender Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,”
Journal of American History
97, no. 2 (September 2010): 372, 382.

9
. This had been true since the early years of the republic. See especially Gautham Rao,
The Creation of the American State: Customhouses, Law, and Commerce in the Age of Revolution
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2008).

10
. For a more detailed discussion, see Ari Hoogenboom,
Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968). Also see Howe, “The New York Custom-House Controversy,” 350–63.

11
. “The Moiety System,”
New York Times
, 8 March 1874; Hoogenboom,
Outlawing the Spoils
, 104.

12
. Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,” 382.

13
. Don Whitehead,
Border Guard
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 66.

14
. “Smuggling in the United States,”
Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly
6, no. 1 (July 1878): 3.

15
. John Dean Goss,
The History of Tariff Administration in the United States from Colonial Times to the McKinley Administrative Bill
(New York: Columbia University, 1897), 69–70.

16
. Whitehead,
Border Guard
, 65.

17
.
Commissions to Examine Certain Custom-Houses of the United States
, 24 May 1877, 16.

18
. Carl E. Prince and Mollie Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service: A Bicentennial History
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Treasury, 1989), 150, 152.

19
. Quoted in Prince and Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service
, 152.

20
. Prince and Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service
, 159. For a more general discussion of the reform movement, see Hoogenboom,
Outlawing the Spoils
.

21
.
Commissions to Examine Certain Custom-Houses of the United States
, 21 May 1877, 111.

22
. Quoted in Prince and Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service
, 155–56.

23
. Goss,
The History of Tariff Administration
, 75.

24
. Thomas Gangs Thorpe, “New York Custom-House,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
(June 1871): 26.

25
. Richard Wheatley, “The New York Custom-House,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
(June 1884): 38.

26
. Quoted in Sven Beckert,
The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 69.

27
. Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,” 374.

28
. See Kristin L. Hoganson,
Consumers’ Emporium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865–1920
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

29
. Beckert,
The Monied Metropolis
, 154.

30
. “Seize Fine Dresses on American Line,”
New York Times
, 30 March 1909.

31
. “Smuggling a Bridal Outfit,”
New York Times
, 20 May 1870.

32
. Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,” 374.

33
. Of course, there were exceptions to the “high value, low bulk” petty smuggling pattern, including a case in which a sailor was caught trying to sneak in fifteen monkeys in violation of the 20 percent monkey tariff. “The Monkey Duty,”
New York Times
, 7 October 1883.

34
. See, for example, “Heavy Importers’ Frauds,”
New York Times
, 24 March 1870 (reporting on two cases of importers caught in a false invoicing scam in which large amounts of laces, velvets, and silks were classified as cotton and other cheap fabric); and “Wholesale Smuggling,”
New York Times
, 16 February 1872 (reporting on cases of fraudulent entry and invoicing).

35
. “More Smuggling Frauds,”
New York Times
, 26 February 1870; “The Sugar Tariff Ring,”
New York Times
, 14 April 1880. On the types of sugar fraud, see Goss,
The History of Tariff Administration
, 73–74.

36
. Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1901,” 374.

37
. The
New York Times
reported this claim but suggested it was exaggerated. See “The Custom-House and the Tariff,”
New York Times
, 22 October 1881.

38
. “Book Smuggling—A New Phase of Fraud,”
New York Times
, 18 January 1869.

39
. Peter Faszi and Martha Woodmansee, “Copyright in Transition,” in
A History of the Book in America
, ed. Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, vol. 4 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 94. Also see James J. Barnes,
Authors, Publishers, and Politicians: The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement, 1815–1854
(London: Routledge,
1974); Zorina Khan, “Does Copyright Piracy Pay? The Effects of U.S. International Copyright Laws on the Market for Books, 1790–1920,”
NBER Working Paper Series
(January 2004).

40
. The American copyright law of 1790 covered only authors who lived in the United States. See Adrian Johns,
Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 196. According to Johns, “America’s first major domestic publishing venture was a Bible with a false imprint attributing it to the king’s printer in London.” See Johns,
Piracy
, 183.

41
. Sidney P. Moss,
Charles Dickens’ Quarrel with America
(Troy, NY: Whitson, 1984); Lawrence H. Houtchens, “Charles Dickens and International Copyright,”
American Literature
13, no. 1 (March 1941): 18–28.

42
. Quoted in Johns,
Piracy
, 203.

43
. Thorpe, “The New York Custom-House,” 23.

44
. William H. Theobald,
Defrauding the Government: True Tales of Smuggling, from the Note-Book of a Confidential Agent of the United States Treasury
(New York: Myrtle, 1908), 442–43.

45
. Quoted in Theobald,
Defrauding the Government
, 439.

46
. Thorpe, “The New York Custom-House,” 23. The article warns that women are so disrespectful of tariffs that when they “achieve suffrage, free-traders will ever be in the halls of Congress.”

47
. “Smuggling Tricksters,”
New York Times
, 3 April 1870. Approximately seventy thousand smuggled cigars were reportedly seized every year. See “Smuggling in the United States,” 3.

48
. Theobald,
Defrauding the Government
, 444–45.

49
. “Smuggling in the United States,” 7.

50
. “Miles of Women Smugglers,”
Washington Post
, 8 March 1908.

51
. Headline dated 13 September 1902. For more details on her remarkable career, see Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State,” 374–75.

52
. H. W. Brands,
American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865–1900
(New York: Doubleday, 2010), 544.

53
. Hoganson,
Consumers’ Emporium
, 22, 168, 171.

54
. Ethan Nadelmann,
Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement
(University Park: Penn State Press, 1994), 28.

55
. Quoted in “The Smuggling Mania,”
Literary Digest
, 1 October 1910, 528.

56
.
New York Times
, 4 September 1910.

57
. For a more general discussion of the laws related to border inspections and the limits of Fourth Amendment protections, see Gregory L. Waples, “From Bags to Body Cavities: The Law of Border Search,”
Columbia Law Review
74, no. 1 (January 1974): 53–87.

58
. Quoted in “The Smuggling Mania,”
Literary Digest
, 1 October 1910, 528.

59
. Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,” 393.

60
. “Getting Home: Latter-Day Experiences in the New York Custom House,”
New York Times
, 19 September 1909.

61
. The turn-of-the-century field notes of a Treasury Department special agent, William Theobald, provide detailed accounts of following wealthy Americans abroad and then catching them trying to smuggle in diamonds and jewelry—including pearl necklaces from Tiffany’s—on their return trip. See Theobald,
Defrauding the Government
, 231.

62
. Theobald,
Defrauding the Government
, 483.

63
. “Ex-Gov. Rollins Caught Smuggling,”
New York Times
, 14 May 1910.

64
. “Nab a Pious, Rich Man,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 23 May 1897.

65
. Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,” 386–88.

66
. Quoted in Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909,” 393.

67
. See Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and America’s Outward State, 1870–1909.”

68
. William Franklin Shanks, “Policemen of the Sea,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
(March 1869): 445.

69
. “Books Show 75% of U.S. Tourists are Smugglers,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 15 May 1929.

Chapter 11

1
. Donna Dennis,
Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth Century New York
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 128.

2
. Carl E. Prince and Mollie Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service: A Bicentennial History
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Treasury, 1989), 255.

3
. David Loth,
The Erotic in Literature
(New York: Julian Messner, 1961), 143.

4
. Wayne E. Fuller,
Morality and the Mail in Nineteenth-Century America
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 227.

5
. See especially Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 203–5.

6
. For a more detailed account, see Fuller,
Morality and the Mail
,
chapter 5
.

7
. Carmine Sarracino and Kevin M. Scott,
The Porning of America: The Rise of Porn Culture, What It Means, and Where We Go from Here
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 7.

8
. Gaines M. Foster,
Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865–1920
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 48.

9
. Prince and Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service
, 256.

10
. Paul S. Boyer,
Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age
, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2002), 29. The playwright George Bernard Shaw is credited for coining “Comstockery,” describing it as “the world’s standing joke at the expense of the United States.… It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the world that America is a provincial place.” Quoted in Andrea Tone,
Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 23.

11
. See Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz,
Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: Vintage, 2002), 390–93.

12
. Aine Collier,
The Humble Little Condom: A History
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007), 144.

13
. Quoted in Nicola Beisel,
Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 105.

14
. Quoted in Dennis,
Licentious Gotham
, 275–76.