File No. 5727/131.
The Chargé of Austria-Hungary to the Secretary of State .
Bar Harbor , September 8, 1907 .
Excellency: Your Excellency was good enough to advise me, by your valued note of the 3d instant, No. 274, that the next issue of [Page 490] the Treasury Decisions would instruct the customs officials of the United States that the provisions of Point F in the published diplomatic note appended to the commercial agreement between the United States and the German Empire have been extended to the Austrian chambers of commerce and industry.
The said issue of the Treasury Decisions has since come to my hands, and I find on pages Treasury Decision No. 28, 400 bearing on the subject. After perusal thereof I can not but draw Your Excellency’s obliging attention to the fact that while it was held out in the above-mentioned note that the customs officials of the United States, without restriction, would be suitably instructed, the instruction printed in the above-mentioned Treasury Decision appears to have been addressed to the appraisers of the United States at New York only.
Unless some error should have crept into the publication of the cited Treasury Decision, the case might occur when, in the entry of some Austrian article imported at Boston, for instance, the value certificate of an Austrian chamber of commerce and industry would not receive the same treatment as a certificate of a German chamber of commerce stating the value of an imported German article, which treatment is regulated by the last paragraph of Circular No. 36 of the Treasury Department, addressed to all the customs collectors and officials in the United States.
As I can not surmise that it is the intention of the Federal Government to discriminate between the Austrian and German certificates of chambers of commerce in ports of entry other than New York, I have the honor to have recourse to Your Excellency’s kindly intercession, and respectfully to request that all the customs officials who have received Treasury Circular No. 36 of 1906 be instructed that the provisions of Point F in the published diplomatic note appended to the commercial agreement between the United States and the German Empire have been extended to the Austrian chambers of commerce and industry.
Looking forward to an obliging answer from Your Excellency to the foregoing, I improve this opportunity to renew the assurance of my most distinguished high consideration.