THE CABINET: Opium

Aloof from the League of Nations, the U. S. picks and chooses such League activities as it pleases to cooperate with. Last week Secretary Kellogg notified the League’s secretary-general that controlling the world’s supply of opium, from raw material to derived product, was one of the things the U. S. thinks the League does not do very successfully. The U. S. declined to join in the appointment of a central board under the Geneva opium convention of 1925, considering it no improvement upon the Hague convention of 1912.

Simultaneous with the release of Secretary Kellogg’s opium note, a Federal customs squad in Jersey City went sniffing through the Dollar liner President Harrison, just back from a world cruise with stops in China. The ship’s crew included 131 Chinamen, who smiled stupidly when Inspector John Stirling ordered his men to cast the President Harrison’s 90-fathom anchor chains out of their locker in the bows. Beneath the chains was a false partition. Behind the partition were 15,990 ounces of high-grade opium — the “Rooster” and “Kein Chung” brands— worth some $1,500,000 over the counter to dream-chasing U. S. dope fiends.

It was the largest U. S. opium-smuggling catch in years, perhaps in all time. The Dollar Line was in danger of a fine of $400,000 for what was presumably the work of skulking yellow employees. At trial, a point in the Dollar Line’s favor will be that, some time ago, it invited the U. S. to maintain customs officers aboard its ships. The U. S. declined.