CORRUPTION: Big Bill

The U.S. customs and Prohibition laws are probably the ones most commonly broken by the general run of U.S. citizens. . . . Is a private citizen corrupt, who, by bribery or otherwise, tries to make or save money by breaking or evading the law?

Down a Manhattan pier to meet the Aquitania as she docked last week, moved a ponderous prodigy of a man. Customs inspectors looked his way and touched their caps from a distance. There could be no mistaking who it was—William Hanford (“Big Bill”) Edwards, the 300-Ib. onetime Princeton footballer who, under President Wilson, used to be Manhattan’s collector of internal revenue. Obviously, Mr. Edwards had come down to meet friends and, by adumbration of his old authority, facilitate their passage through the customs shed.

The friends, a smart-looking Mr. & Mrs. Clarence S. Herter of Manhattan, debarked with six trunks and seven pieces of hand luggage and the courtesy of the Port. Mr. Edwards took them in genial tow, commandeered the attention of two inspectors and guided” the party to the section lettered “H.” A cheery conversation began as the trunks were unlocked and an inspectorial eye ran over the-Herters’ joint declaration.

The inspectorial eye twinkled almost as brightly as the diamond clasp on Mrs. Herter’s triple strand of pearls. The declaration showed that the Herters had prudently limited their foreign purchases to exactly the amount—$200 worth—which they could bring in free. The inspectors smiled, perhaps to congratulate onetime Collector Edwards upon having such modest, honest friends, and began looking into Herter trunks in a way that promised to be pleasantly perfunctory.

The Herter-Edwards conversation was interrupted by an ominous silence and then a silken rustling between the customs men. They were pulling out of one Herter trunk an astonishing quantity of flowered cerise silk, lined with baby blue. The material eventually resolved itself into a gentleman’s dressing gown of prodigious proportions, a dressing gown from Paris to fit only such a monster figure as that of William Hanford (“Big Bill”) Edwards. This article, which was a present for Mr. Edwards, was nowhere mentioned in the Herter’s declaration.

Everyone looked amazed, then embarrassed, then annoyed, each in his own way. The inspectors began searching in earnest. The Herters had been abroad for six months, but not even the old plea, “I’ve worn that, it’s almost worn out,” could keep the inspectors’ list of their attempted smugglings from including woolen coats and suits worth $700 abroad; silk pajamas, negligees, lingerie worth $1,300; bed linen, mezzotints, and a triple string of Tecla pearls with a diamond clasp.

Mrs. Herter regained her smile. Mr. Herter was not so cheerful, especially when the inspectors crashed his four bottles of choice liquor and told him that he would have to pay a big bill—$12,-919.25 in duties & fines—to recover all his property. William Hanford (“Big Bill”) Edwards, onetime Collector of the Internal revenue, left the pier in a thoughtful mood, perhaps reflecting that other friends of his returning from Europe with goods to smuggle will not soon welcome his large and eloquent presence to meet them on the dock.