WILDER, Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs to Comly, June 9, 1879

Mr. Wilder to Mr. Comly.

[With inclosure from collector-general.]

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge your dispatch under date of May 2, in which you ask whether the tariff collected by the Hawaiian custom-house upon all cotton manufactured into clothing, the same being the growth, manufacture or produce of the United States, is not in contravention of Article II of the reciprocity treaty.

The custom-house officials of this port have always considered the term “manufacture of cotton” could only be held to cover such goods as are imported in the same form as when they come from a cotton manufacturer’s hands, say, as piece goods, not after having passed through another process; a shirt, for instance, even if made wholly of cotton cloth, is not a manufacture of cotton, i. e. raw cotton; it is, made of cotton cloth, and as such, has not been admitted under the clause “manufacture of cotton.”

His Majesty’s Government have and desire to continue to give the reciprocity treaty the most liberal interpretation, and are open to argument on this point, and would be pleased to receive the interpretation placed upon this clause “cotton and manufactures of cotton, bleached and unbleached, and whether or not stained, painted or printed,” by the experts of the Treasury Department, at Washington.

I beg to hand you copy of a dispatch from the collector-general of customs, which clearly gives his reasoning upon this point.

Renewing the assurances of the highest respect and most distinguished consideration,

I have, &c.,