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alleged to be ''for the purpose of doubling the wealth of ten or a 
dozen millionaires of California, and also for the purpose of pay- 
ing the wages of tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers who ex- 
clusively monopolize the labor of the California lemon orchards, 
thus depriving American laborers of opportunity of labor and 
wages." 
This is very absurd, as well as false. To patronize the foreign 
lemon growers and steamship companies would be better, the 
importers think, than to patronize American railroads, American 
orchardists and American labor. Japanese are employed to a very 
small extent in the region where lemons grow. If there were 
enough white labor they would not be employed at all. Moreover, 
oranges and lemons are now grown in Arizona, Texas, Florida, 
Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. 
Such petitions as those just referred to have been circulated 
at Atlantic coast summer resorts by ''barkers," such as those who 
attract attention to the shows at seaside amusement parks, and 
many small boys signed them. Posters have also been displayed 
by these Sicilian agents charging the ''high cost of living" on the 
lemon tariff, which would not cost the average person one cent in 
a year, if anything at all, for lemons have actually been cheaper 
this year than they were before the duty was increased, so that 
the dealers (who are really at the mercy of the importers), are 
promising a great deal if they promise to reduce the cost of lemons 
in case the present tariff is repealed. 
The fact is that the duty was not a serious burden to the im- 
porters until very recently because the execution of the customs 
regulations permitted them to claim, and to obtain, a rebate for 
alleged rotten fruit, amounting sometimes to fifty per cent, of 
the cargo, which the}^ were clever enough to sell afterward as 
first-class, sound fruit. This has been stopped. A close observer 
in Washington said recently : 
"What the government has lost in customs frauds will never 
be known, but as Collector Wm. Loeb, Jr., has shown at New 
York alone, the sum must reach many millions of dollars. Im- 
porters have shown the greatest cunning as well as unscrupulous- 
ness. They have had to refund millions of dollars to the Treasury 
Department. Some of the Italian importers were sent to jail. 
The Italian lemon importers are the latest to have been circum- 
vented, but the government had to revise the regulations for the 
importation of lemons in order to head them off, and it took 
eio^ht months to find out how to meet the case. Aided by an 
almost unlimited 'slush fund' put up by the Sicilian lemon grow- 
ers, and by very shrewd and resourceful lawyers who are spend- 
ing money lavishly to buy magazine and newspaper space, the 
Italian importers are now seeking to have the tariff revised in 
their • interest. This is not the first time foreign interests have 
tried to shape legislation in Congress, but it is one of the boldest." 
The way the Treasury Department stopped the importers from 
