COST OF BIOLOGICAL BOOKS IN 1928 



603 



15 per cent to 15 per cent. That it was the intention 

 of Congress to reduce the duty on these classes of 

 books mostly or solely is evidenced by the fact that 

 in the new bill many other classes of books which 

 are competitive from the American publishers' and 

 printers' point of view were raised from the normal 

 rate in various ways. 



Apparently the action of Congress in reducing the 

 duty met with objection on the part of the Treasury, 

 and in 1918-19, through its board of Appraisers and 

 Customs Courts, the question of the value of the 

 imported books on which the new duty of 15 per cent 

 should be assessed was again raised, and, notwith- 

 standing the arguments of the publishers — arguments 

 which convinced the Board of General Appraisers in 

 the years 1902.-03 — the Customs Court declared that 

 the duty should be assessed not upon the cost of the 

 books but upon a fictitious price, which in many or 

 most cases was double and in some cases more than 

 double the actual cost of the books to the importers, 

 the effect being that the books in question now paid a 

 greater amount of duty under the reduced rate as 

 authorized by Congress than was previously paid on 

 such books at the higher rate of Z5 per cent and the 

 price of these books to students and others were of 

 necessity greatly increased. 



There seems no reasonable excuse for this successful 

 attempt on the part of the Treasury, through its 

 Customs Court, to nullify the deliberate intentions of 

 Congress, and the students and others who use books 

 to which this new ruling applies apparently rejoiced 

 too soon at the attempt of Congress to reduce their 

 burdens. As has been pointed out above, books 

 imported from abroad now cost these consumers more 

 in relation to their foreign price than was the case 

 before the duty was nominally reduced by Congress 

 from 2.5 per cent to 15 per cent. 



Even although under a strictly narrow legal inter- 



pretation of the wording of the Tariff Act, backed by a 

 report from a customs agent which was biased, incom- 

 plete, and inaccurate, there is perhaps warrant for the 

 ruling which was put into effect, it seems without 

 doubt that common sense should govern the matter, 

 as was the case in 1903, rather than a merely tech- 

 nical, narrow, legal ruling on the actual words used , 

 the evident intention of Congress having been to 

 reduce the duty, whereas the ruling of the Customs 

 Court above referred to actually increases it, and the 

 benevolent intention of Congress has been frustrated 

 by the bureaucratic methods of the Treasury. 



This sad tale, which is of direct and 

 personal interest to every reader of The 

 Quarterly Review of Biology, is one 

 more evidence of the nobility, grandeur, 

 and intelligence with which the govern- 

 ment of this country operates. 



In concluding these notes for the present 

 year I should like again to emphasize that 

 the statistical nature of the basic data is 

 such as not to permit wide generalization. 

 We are dealing here only with very small 

 samples of books in general, and with by 

 no means all of the strictly biological 

 books. Indeed for some of the countries 

 our samples are only small fractions of the 

 biological works there published. So 

 the reader must be cautious in the kind of 

 conclusions he draws from these annual 

 reviews of the experience of The Quar- 

 terly Review of Biology regarding book 

 prices. 



