The question whether copyrighted works could be imported because they were included under the free list of the tariff came before the Treasury Department in 1901. With respect to copyrighted music, the Attorney-General considered the two questions whether the copyright law prohibits the importation of copyright music and whether the free list in the tariff constitutes an exception to the copyright law. He held as to the latter that the tariff is to prescribe certain duties on importations; it is not designed to authorize importation. It simply provides when and under what circumstances certain articles are exempt from duty. Accordingly copyrighted musical compositions are not taken out of the effect of the copyright law. The Secretary of the Treasury ruled (Treas. dec. no. 23225), in accordance with this advice, that copyrighted music was prohibited importation,--but this refers to importation without consent of the copyright proprietor. {Sidenote: The duty on books} Although not of copyright bearing, the significance in respect to importations of books of the newly added phrase "wholly or in chief value of paper" in the tariff act of 1909, which otherwise continued the 25 per cent duty on books, may here be mentioned, as of importance to importers. It was included in the Payne tariff, apparently at the instance of the bookbinding interests, and was at first construed by the local customs authorities at New York to make books bound in leather subject to the 40 per cent duty on leather, and books bound in silk subject to the 50 per cent duty on silk, as the component parts of chief value. The Secretary of the Treasury has, however, overruled this view and admitted books thus bound under the 25 per cent duty on the ground that "the limitation placed upon the paragraph by the addition of the words not found in the previous law was intended to exclude from that rate, books bound in such fancy or costly bindings as to be imported not on account of their intrinsic literary merit or their value as books." The Board of General Appraisers has since, however, rendered a decision supporting the local appraisers. {Sidenote: British prohibition of importation}