our ultimate purpose, we have the right, when we go into a store, and we do not wish to buy the goods of a particular country, and where we have a statute that says the mark of origin shall be there, to insist that the mark shall be there. It should not be a box that I hold in my hand on which there is a label, while underneath there is another label superimposed that indicates that the article is of domestic manufacture.

I have prepared a proposed amendment to the bill, which is molded upon our New York statute, and which will go further than the present statute. I suggest that so you may not have so many provisions in the law which do not have sanctions for their support. Actually, the present law completely breaks down when it comes to a criminal prosecution, because it is almost impossible to prove an obliteration or abrasion, or whatever you call it, of the marking on those articles. Mr. KNUTSON. Do you not think that you would be in a stronger position if you appeared here as the representative of American manufacturers, rather than as an anti-Nazi representative, or representative of any anti-Nazi organization which, in my opinion, is un-American? Mr. FISHER. I certainly disagree with you. I believe that every American has the right to be sympathetic with persons abroad who have suffered most brutal and undemocratic treatment. I cannot change the capacity in which I appear before the committee. I am not appearing directly for American manufacturers, even if our efforts have brought millions of dollars of trade to American manufacturers. What we are endeavoring to do is to prevent this fraud upon our business, and regardless of whether you actually sympathize with our objective, we have stimulated American industry time and again to provide substitutes for articles that have been coming from abroad. Mr. COOPER. You are making some specific reference to the bill. Mr. FISHER. I have here a proposed amendment, which I would like to introduce, as a model amendment, to the tariff act. It is modeled on the New York statute, and, with your permission, I would like to introduce the amendment.

Mr. COOPER. Very well. I understood you to say that the New York statute is a penal statute.

Mr. FISHER. Yes, sir.

Mr. CooPER. What relation does that have to a customs statute? Mr. FISHER. Subdivision (e) of the statute which you have before you, and which you are now considering, beginning with line 5, on page 6, deals with penalties, and I am calling attention to the fact that that section might just as well not be in the act at all. It is useless for this committee or the Congress to pass legislation without teeth in it. Under any such act, history shows that in prosectuions under it it is almost impossible to obtain evidence of actual obliteration. What we always obtain is the finished article. We see the finished product, but we do not obtain the physical evidence of obliteration. We are constantly faced by the defense that the obliteration was not willful. Mr. COOPER. You have already covered that several times.

Mr. FISHER. Yes, sir; I have drafted an amendment which would strengthen the penalty clause, and I ask the indulgence of the committee to place it in the record.

Mr. COOPER. Without objection, it will be included in the record at this point.

(Said amendment is as follows:)

PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO CUSTOMS ADMINISTRATIVE BILL OF 1937

Add to section (3), a new subdivision

(a) "Person" shall be deemed to include firm, partnership, association, or corporation.

(b) "Sell" shall be deemed to include offer to sell, expose for sale, and possess with intent to dispose of or to sell.

(c) "Article of merchandise" shall be deemed to include a cask, bottle, stopper, vessel, case, cover, wrapper, package, band, ticket, label or other thing containing or covering an article of merchandise, or with which an article of merchandise is intended to be sold, or is sold.

(d) "Mark of origin" shall be deemed to mean and include any name, mark, words, symbol, or indication required under the provisions of this section or prescribed by the regulations of the Secretary of the Treasury pursuant to this section.

(e) "Remove" shall be deemed to include deface, alter, and obliterate.

(f) "Conceal" shall be deemed to include the original placing of a mark of origin upon an article of merchandise in any manner whatsoever, or the arranging or combining of two or more articles of merchandise into a single unit, whereby the mark of origin is removed from open view, or is rendered illegible or inconspicuous.

(g) The terms "remove" and "conceal" are not to be deemed mutually exclusive. (2) Any person who wholly or in part removes or conceals or who shall cause to be, wholly or in part, removed or concealed from or upon an article of merchandise the mark of origin; or who sells or causes to be sold an article of merchandise from or upon which to his or its knowledge, or to the knowledge of his or its agents, servants, or employees there has been, in whole or in part, removed or concealed the mark of origin, or who sells or causes to be sold an article of merchandise from the inspection of which such knowledge could have been obtained, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and for each offense shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined not to exceed $500 or shall be sentenced to one year's imprisonment, or both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court, and for each subsequent offense and conviction thereof shall be fined not less than $1,000 or sentenced to one year's imprisonment, or both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court; provided that it shall not be deemed a violation of this section if at the time of sale, said article of merchandise and the immediate and outer container or containers thereof shall be marked, stamped, tagged, branded, or labeled in legible and conspicuous English words with said mark of origin or the concealment thereof shall have completely ceased.

(3) The sale of an article of merchandise from which there has been in whole or in part removed or concealed a mark of origin shall be presumptive evidence of the violation of this subdivision.

Submitted by

NON-SECTARIAN ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE

TO CHAMPION HUMAN RIGHTS, SAMUEL UNTERMYER, President, MITCHELL SALEM FISHER,

Chairman, Legal Committee.

Mr. McCORMACK. Why is it that we cannot prosecute them now for violating the marking provision of the law? I am asking that for the record.

Mr. FISHER. The reason is that it is ordinarily not possible to secure evidence of the actual act of defacing, destroying, removing, or obliterating the mark. That evidence is not ordinarily available. The defacing is done in secret, and we have no evidence of it. What we have in evidence is the finished product, and we have sales of the finished product.

Mr. McCORMACK. Do those things happen after the articles arrive in this country, and after they leave the hands of the importer, but before going into the hands of the consumer?

Mr. FISHER. That occurs in thousands of instances.

Mr. McCORMACK. Any law passed to meet that condition would attach here, but it would not reach such obliterations and defacements committed abroad.

Mr. FISHER. We are not concerned with the obliterations done abroad. At the time the article reaches the customhouse, the customs officials will insist that they be marked to show the country of origin. Mr. McCORMACK. Then, that situation must be met by the customs officials enforcing the law.

Mr. FISHER. Except that where an article has been deliberately shipped from one country to another country so as to be repacked in the second country, and thereby obtain the good will of the other country, which is not the true country of origin, we feel that there should be an extension of the customs regulations. At the present time there is not a substantial amount of work done in the second country. We have evidence that the transshipments have been deliberate, but most of the value of the article has come from the first country.

Mr. McCORMACK. Would you reach it by regulation, or would legislation be necessary?

Mr. FISHER. In my opinion it could be done by regulation, except that I do not know whether the Treasury Department would agree with me. The Treasury Department has in a number of instances declared that an unsubstantial amount of sewing or polishing in the second country will not change the country of origin. In order to accomplish that object, I would suggest that in the present bill, on page 2, line 21, after the word "article" add the words "in whole or in part." Those words should be inserted so as to give the Treasury Department the power by proper regulation to require the addition of other words that will prevent deception with respect to the origin of an article, either in whole or in part. We are, of course, very much opposed to dropping the word "conspicuous" from the bill as presented by the Treasury Department. Under the present law we have a funnel, such as this [exhibiting], and it is almost physically impossible to see the mark of origin.

Mr. McCORMACK. Where is the mark?

Mr. FISHER. The mark on the funnel is sometimes over here [indicating].

Mr. REED. Do many watches and clocks come in that way? Mr. FISHER. Yes, sir; a great many watches are coming in. The amazing part of it is that so many watches come in from Switzerland that are German watches. I personally purchased a watch, with my wife, in a leading department store in New York City. I asked the sales girl, "Is that a Swiss watch?" and she said, "Yes; it is Swiss." I said, "Are you sure it is Swiss, or that it has a Swiss movement," and she said, "Yes; it is a Swiss movement." I said to her, "Call the buyer," and when she called the buyer, we removed the case, and it was found to have German works.

Mr. REED. Is there a comparatively new industry in this country in the making of zippers?

Mr. FISHER. Yes, sir.

Mr. REED. We do have the competition, principally, of two countries in that.

Mr. FISHER. Yes, sir; Germany and Japan make them.

Of course, today, unless we take too seriously two customs decisions, containers must be marked, but under this law we will not have to mark containers at all, and, apparently, that is a very serious defect.

Mr. DINGELL. I want to ask the witness a question with reference to the practice of obliterating the marks indicating the country of origin: That suggestion is not applicable alone to goods made in Germany?

Mr. FISHER. No, sir.

Mr. DINGELL. You want to prevent such practices, regardless of the origin of the goods, whether Japan, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, or any other country?

Mr. FISHER. Certainly. My interest in this matter certainly has been stimulated by the fact that I am interested in preventing a flood of German articles into this country. That has been a stimulation, but we come here, not because of that; we are not asking for any special treatment of German goods, because for all I know, tomorrow the American people may be tremendously interested in preventing a flood of Japanese goods from coming in. The consumer has the right to know whether he is buying German-made goods, or goods made in Czechoslovakia, or anywhere else.

Mr. DINGELL. You want the origin of the goods specified?

Mr. FISHER. Yes, sir. I do not wish to introduce sentiment into the situation, but there was a situation in Detroit a few weeks ago where an orthodix Jewish woman went into a store and purchased some candlesticks: She wanted the candlesticks for use in connection with religious services. This woman would never have bought Germanmade candlesticks. The thought of that would have been simply shocking to her. She went into the store and bought the candlesticks, but the mark as to origin was so indistinct, or was so obliterated, that it was only after one of her neighbors became suspicious and subjected the article to a close examination that it was finally determined that the candlestick was of German origin.

Mr. COOPER. We thank you for your statement.

Mr. FISHER. I thank you for the hearing.

Mr. COOPER. I conveyed to the chairman of the committee information that some members of the committee desired an opportunity to hear other witnesses, and he stated that it would be agreeable to continue the hearings on next Tuesday, but he expected to close the hearings on that day. Therefore, without objection, the committee will stand adjourned until 10:30 o'clock next Tuesday morning.

(Thereupon the committee adjourned to meet on Ťudesay, June 1, 1937, at 10:30 a. m.)