The Customs House of the great City by the Hudson has its own _corps d'espionnage_, the object of which is to defeat the large number of tourists returning from summer trips to Europe, who attempt the next-to-impossible feat of "beating the Customs" by smuggling heavily excisable goods. Under the Roosevelt and McKinley regimes, when high tariffs were the ruling order, even rich men and women resorted to all manner of expedients in order to defeat the excisemen in West Street landing-stages. In the year 1905 matters had come to such a pass that a definitely organised system of espionage was adopted with a view to curtailing the operations of wealthy smugglers who could well have afforded to pay the heavy duties involved. The services of stewards and stewardesses on board the liners were not only requisitioned, both men and women being given pass-keys for the purpose of privately inspecting the luggage of suspected passengers, but women, apparently of wealth and standing, were also commissioned to travel to and fro between European and American ports and use all the means at their disposal to induce sister American tourists to give up, confidentially of course, a correct estimate of their purchases in Paris and London, the same information being duly transmitted to the New York Customs as soon as vessels berthed, or touched at Sandy Hook. Not only were the maids and valets of suspected smugglers suborned, but even, in London and Paris, the counter salesmen connected with fashionable outfitters and jewellers, as well as invoice clerks, were paid a fixed rate of reward for all information given to American Consular agents in Europe which might help the transatlantic port authorities to discover the delinquents and their private contraband on arrival at New York. Then there was the trick of the weighing-machine, guaranteed to take avoirdupois to the smallest fractions—plausible women spies and officious stewards and stewardesses making it their pleasure to have each saloon passenger "scaled" in order to show how beneficially sea-travel affected the health. At the Customs offices at New York these machines stood ready, in duplicate, to weigh any fair suspect who might possibly have swathed her form in contraband silks or other prohibited commodities, and a comparison with weight-lists previously supplied by obliging stewardesses was sure to decide the question as to whether or not she was to be made the object of a personal visitation by the official female searchers of the Port. In the case of one lady who was weighed off Queenstown, the indicator then recording 10 stone 6 lb., or 146 lb., duly registered by a stewardess, it was found that the duplicate machine at New York made her turn the scale at 168 lb., the result being that she was found to be carrying dutiable goods concealed on her person worth many hundreds of dollars excise tax to the authorities.