225 Opinion of the Court. provide revenue; to regulate commerce with foreign countries; to prevent dumping of foreign merchandise on the markets of the United States; to regulate the value of foreign money; and for other purposes." The Emergency Tariff Act imposed for the period of six months from the date of the Act, May 27, 1921, a tariff on the following articles: wheat, flour, flax seed, corn and maize, beans, peanuts, potatoes, onions, rice, lemons, vegetable oils, sheep, beef, veal, mutton and lamb, cotton and manufactures of cotton, in its paragraphs 18 and 19 on wool, on sugars, butter, cheese, milk, wrapper and filler tobacco, apples, cherries, olives. Title II directed an investigation into the question whether any industry of the United States is likely to be injured by dumping of foreign goods upon our markets at less than market value. It provided for a special dumping duty and a means of determining what that should be, and it made that title the Anti-Dumping Act. Title V provided for an increased duty on dyes and chemicals, which title was to be known as the Dye and Chemical Control Act. The whole act was directed to protecting the markets of the United States from being swamped by importations from abroad, and to increasing the revenue. Congress proposed to keep the wool market free from demoralization in the interests of the wool growers of the country, on the one hand, and the owners of wool stocks on hand in the country, on the other. It was asserted in the argument on behalf of the Government, and the assertion was acquiesced in by counsel for the importers, that at least half in weight and value of the importations of wool from which clothing is made is combing wool. The contention of the importers in this case, if successful, would therefore bring about the result that half, both in weight and in value, of the foreign wool in competition with wool produced in the Opinion of the Court. 274 U.S. United States and with the stocks of wool on hand in the United States, would not be kept out of its markets by the emergency tariff at all, and that the swamping of the domestic wool markets to that extent would continue under the free importation of combing wools. More than this, such combing wools as would come in under the emergency tariff, if construed as the Government contends, would produce as much revenue as the carding wools, and yet, by the importers' construction that revenue would be lost. If the language of the statute is such that such results can not be avoided, of course it must be enforced accordingly. If Congress by its language has made a mistake, and so has failed in its purpose, this Court can not supply by its decision the omission of a necessary legislative provision to effect its purpose. With the intent of the Act clearly in mind, however, we must see whether it is true that the language used can only bear the construction insisted upon by the importers and upheld by the Court of Customs Appeals, or whether there is a broader and more reasonable construction that can be fairly placed upon the statute which will serve the plain Congressional purpose. From the 500 pages of the evidence, we find that, in the custom of the trade, the term "clothing wool" applies to the short staple wool which is suitable for carding and which goes into what is known as the woolen or felting process for making cloths of that character, and the term "combing wool" refers to wool of longer staple which goes into another process known as combing for making worsted cloths; that in the trade, clothing wool and combing wool are thus contrasted; second, that originally the worsted process could not be used with the fine wools like the merino wools, because the staple was not long enough; but that the development of combing machinery, particularly what is called the French 225 Opinion of the Court. combing process, has enabled manufacturers to comb wool of shorter staple than formerly, and to make it into worsteds; and that, in addition to this, cross breeding between the merino and other wools has increased the length of the staple and the amount of available combing wools as compared with the carding wools, so that the border line between the use of combing wools for clothing and that of carding wool has changed; that the definitions in the principal dictionaries and encyclopedias set forth the same trade distinction between clothing wool and combing wool, as between manufactures of wool, and manufactures of worsteds; that both clothing wool and combing wool are largely grown in this country. The expert witnesses of the importers generally testified that there was no other meaning for clothing wool but carding wool. There was other substantial evidence, however, from expert witnesses for the Government, of large experience in dealing in wool, who testified that, speaking generally, and in ordinary parlance, wools were divided into clothing wools and carpet wools with reference to their chief use, and that it was only in the trade in the grading and sorting of wools and in their purchase and sale that the term clothing wool was distinguished from combing wool. The competency and relevancy of such evidence as to the ordinary meaning of language in tariff classifications is sustained by the decision of this Court in Robertson v. Salomon, 130 U. S. 412, 415. The natural and usual meaning of the words "clothing wool" is wool for clothing. That is what the non-expert reader of the words would understand until he was advised of a different meaning by reason of the language of the trade. When, therefore, the words are used "commonly known as clothing wools," the ordinary inference from the collocation of the words is that they refer to wool that is used in making clothing. If Congress had intended that the words "clothing wool" should have their commercial Opinion of the Court. 274 U.S. designation, it would simply have used the words without qualification or it would have said "commercially known as." It would not have used the phrase "commonly known as." The phrase indicates not only that clothing wool is used in its ordinary or non-expert meaning, but is to serve the same purpose as the same phrase in connection with carpet wools, in the same clause, by indicating that, while these wools were capable of use for other than clothing and carpets, respectively, they were to be classified by reference to their chief use. In the world view which the committee report shows clearly that the Congress was taking of the wool market, it was not dealing with the processes by which wool was made into cloth, and distinguishing between them. If it had wished to make a distinction based on the process of manufacture rather than on the material which was to be used, it certainly would not have included, as expressly within the operation of paragraph 18, the hair of the camel, the angora goat and the alpaca; for in preparing those materials for the making of cloth the hair is always combed and never carded. It had chiefly in mind, as shown by the contrast made in paragraph 18, the distinction between wool which was made into carpets and could not be grown in the United States, and wool made into clothing which could be, and was, grown in the United States and in England and on the continent and in South America, Australasia and South Africa. The world view of the production of wools which affected Congress in enacting this legislation is also revealed in the passage from the Tariff Commission report, which we have already quoted, where it refers to South America, South Africa and Australasia as "the three great exporting regions which supply the deficiencies in production of clothing wools of western Europe and North America." This use of the words "clothing wools" of course is used only in contrast to the carpet wools which together with the cloth ing wools embrace the whole world production. We do not find it difficult, therefore, in our interpretation of paragraph 18 to give effect to the evident purpose of Congress. We are confronted by counsel for the importers with the language to be found in many of our own cases giving controlling effect in classification of merchandise for duty in tariff acts to trade terms and commercial usage. It is these cases also upon which the Court of Customs Appeals relied in reaching its conclusion. Their principle has nowhere been more strongly stated than by Mr. Justice Gray in the case of Cadwalader v. Zeh, 151 U. S. 171, 176: "It has long been a settled rule of interpretation of the statutes imposing duties on imports, that if words used therein to designate particular kinds or classes of goods have a well known signification in our trade and commerce, different from their ordinary meaning among the people, the commercial meaning is to prevail, unless Congress has clearly manifested a contrary intention; and that it is only when no commercial meaning is called for or proved, that the common meaning of the words is to be adopted." This statement is supported by a long line of authorities, one of which is Robertson v. Salomon, 130 U. S. 412, 415, in which Mr. Justice Bradley used the following language: "The commercial designation, as we have frequently decided, is the first and most important designation to be ascertained in settling the meaning and application of the tariff laws. See Arthur v. Lahey, 96 U. S. 112, 118; Barber v. Schell, 107 U. S. 617, 623; Worthington v. Abbott, 124 U. S. 434, 436; Arthur's Executors v. Butterfield, 125 U. S. 70, 75. But if the commercial designation fails to give an article its proper place in the classification of the law, then resort must necessarily be had to the common designation." |