De Jonge v. Magone/Opinion of the Court

by Edward Douglass White

United States Supreme Court

159 U.S. 562

De Jonge  v.  Magone

The paragraph of the tariff act of 1883 (22 Stat. 510), under which the classification complained of was made, is contained in the statement of facts. It is contended by counsel for plaintiffs in error that it should be construed so as to read as follows:

'Paper hangings and paper for screens or flreboards, paper antiquarian, demy, drawing, elephant, foolscap, imperial, letter, note, and all other paper (of the class of paper antiquarian, demy, drawing, elephant, foolscap, imperial, letter, and note) not specially enumerated or provided for in this act: twenty-five per centum ad valorem.'

This contention is based upon the claims that—

(a) The products in question are manufactures of paper, as contradistinguished from paper, because completed paper, as produced in paper mills, is but one of the tangible ingredients, the other products (sizing of a particular description, water-color paints, wool flock, and the like) being materials entirely foreign to the art of the paper maker, and that complete merchantable paper is employed simply as the material, and is subjected to elaborate mechanical processes, involving the employment of machinery entirely unknown to the paper maker's art, and operated by workmen who are not paper makers; and (b) That paper hangings and paper for screens and fireboards are a group of products manufactured from an inferior grade of paper stock, and standing equivocally between paper and manufactures of paper, and that as the other nine articles enumerated in the paragraph under which the classification of plaintiffs' importations was made, viz. paper antiquarian, demy, drawing, elephant, foolscap, imperial letter, and note paper, are of the writing and drawing class of papers, a high grade of paper stock, and solely the product of paper mills, nothing is paper, within the meaning of the term as it is employed in the expression, 'and all other paper not specially enumerated or provided for in this act,' which is not of the class of papers last enumerated.

But it is established by the evidence, beyond dispute, that at the time of the passage of the tariff act of 1883 'fancy papers' were largely dealt in, in commerce, and were well known in the commerce and trade of this country; that there were a great variety of fancy papers; and that such designation covered both the importations out of which this controversy arose. It is not reasonable to suppose that congress assumed that the manipulation or treatment of particular paper, in the completed condition in which produced at a paper mill, by mere surface coating,-a process which did not change its form, but only increased the uses to which such paper might be put,-had the result to cause the article to cease to be paper and to become a manufacture of paper, especially in view of the continued commercial designation of the article as a variety of paper, and its sale and purchase in commerce as paper.

Congress must be presumed to have known that the paper employed in paper hangings and paper for screens or flreboards was printing paper, sized in the paper mill, and subjected to treatment elsewhere by which the value of the article as paper was greatly enhanced, and the association of those products with the writing and drawing class of papers in the paragraph in question is convincing evidence that paper hangings and paper subjected to similar processes by which paper hangings were produced were regarded as paper, and not as manufactures of paper. Not alone to avoid doubt and confusion would such products as paper hangings likely be provided for separately, rather than in association with writing and drawing papers, if deemed to be 'manufactures' of paper, but as an article clearly a manufacture of paper, to wit, 'paper envelopes,' was assessed at a duty of 25 per cent. ad valorem, opportunity existed to place paper hangings in the same paragraph, and such would likely have been done if paper hangings had been deemed 'manufactures of' and not 'paper.'

Nor is it at all probable that congress would specifically impose a duty of 25 per centum upon paper hangings, and intend that an importation of velvet paper of a similar class to wall paper, and used for wall decorations, should be assessed as a manufacture of paper, at a rate of 15 per centum ad valorem.

While, directly speaking, the products in question might be termed manufactures of the particular variety of paper stock employed as their basis, yet the resultant product of such manufacture was a higher and better grade of paper. There was no such change of form as in the case of paper screens, paper boxes, paper envelopes, and other like manufactures of paper. The case is analogous in its main features to Hartranft v. Wiegmann, 121 U.S. 609, 615, 7 Sup. Ct. 1240, where it was held that shells cleaned by acid, and then ground on an emery wheel, and afterwards etched by acid, and intended to be sold for ornaments, as shells, remained shells, and that they had not been manufactured into a new and different article, having a distinctive name, character, or use from that of a shell.

In the schedule of the tariff act of 1883 under consideration, congress attempted a classification of paper generally. A duty of 20 per cent. was laid upon 'paper, sized or glued, suitable only for printing paper'; a duty of 15 per cent. was laid upon 'printing paper, unsized, used for books and newspapers exclusively'; a duty of 10 per cent. was laid upon 'sheathing paper'; and all other paper was embraced in the paragraph under which the paper in question was classified, and made dutiable at 25 per centum ad valorem. As cheaper grades of paper than the writing and drawing paper enumerated in the paragraph last referred to were elsewhere referred to in the act, it is obvious that the expression, 'and all other paper not specially enumerated or provided for in this act,' meant precisely what was expressed, and embraced paper, of any grade, not elsewhere enumerated in the act. 'Other paper, not elsewhere provided for,' would embrace 'tissue' paper. Lawrence v. Merritt, 127 U.S. 113, 8 Sup. Ct. 1099. And that term would also seem to include the various grades of brown and other wrapping paper, and the rope manilla paper out of which the 'leather goods' of plaintiffs in error were produced, even though not of the high grade of paper known as 'writing and drawing papers.'

It follows from what has been stated that the court rightly refused the charges requested by plaintiffs in error. It equally follows that if the word 'paper' had a well-known signification in trade and commerce in 1883, which embraced these products, that meaning would control. Cadwalader v. Zeh, 151 U.S. 171, 14 Sup. Ct. 288, and cases cited page 176, 151 U.S., page 288, 14 Sup. Ct. This principle clearly authorized the court to submit to the jury the question, 'Was this article, in the trade and commerce of this country when congress legislated in 1883, a variety of paper?' and to instruct them, in the event they answered the question in the affirmative, to find in favor of the collector.

Affirmed.

Notes