Celler Defends Label Ruling of Treasury Dep’t

Reprinted from Yesterday’s Late Edition

Action by the Treasury Department in not confining its recent label ruling to German goods and in allowing a period of thirty days to elapse before the ruling became effective was defended yesterday by Congressman Emanuel Celler against an attack made some time ago by Samuel Untermyer, leader of the anti-Nazi boycott movement.

In a letter to Mr. Untermyer, Congressman Celler wrote:

“The section of law requiring the marking of imported merchandise does not necessarily require that the name of the ‘country’ must be impressed on the imported article shall be so marked as to ‘indicate’ the country of origin. Obviously, if merchandise coming from Germany was marked ‘Made in Saxony,’ ‘Made in Wurttemburg,’ etc., it seems to me the only possible opportunity to have the Treasury Department change its ruling was to convince it that such marking did not properly indicate the country of origin to the average person.”

UNTERMYER DISAGREES IN REPLY

Replying last night to Congressman Celler’s letter, Mr. Untermyer expressed himself as being in opposition to Mr. Celler’s construction of the law.

“I quite agree,” he said, “that the bill requires that articles should be marked so as to indicate the country of origin. Knowing, as we do, that these markings were intended to deceive the public from the thousands of complaints pouring into headquarters, I felt that the attitude of the department was inexcusable.

“They made no effort to change it until we had our papers prepared to mandamus them. When they learned of that they hurriedly reversed their judgment, and then did what was quite as bad–allowed the German manufacturers three months in which to accumulate stocks of merchandise.”

Mr. Untermyer said in his letter that there had been “no evidence in our organization of the ‘cooperation’ from the department to which you referred.” He said the record of the department has been “outrageous.”