Proclamation 6004—United States Customs Service 200th Anniversary Year, 1989

July 31, 1989, marks the 200th anniversary of the United States Customs Serivce. On that day, 200 years ago, President George Washington signed legislation establishing the Customs Service as part of the Department of the Treasury.

The story of the U.S. Customs Service is, in part, the story of America itself. Throughout much of our Nation's history, customs duties accounted for the largest portion of the revenues needed to sustain and operate our national government. Customs revenues paid the Revolutionary War debt and played an important role in U.S. growth from 13 States along the Atlantic Coast to a Nation spanning the North American continent. The settling of the West, the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, the purchase of the Louisisna Territories and Alaska, the building of our military academies, and the creation of our national capital in Washington, D.C., were all financed by customs revenues.

For nearly 125 years, until passage of the Federal Income Tax Act of 1913, the Customs Service was virtually the only sources of revenue for the U.S. Government. Today, despite greatly reduced rates of duty on imported goods, Customs contributes more than $16 billion per year to the national Treasury.

Beyond its contributions of revenue, the United States Customs Service has performed other important functions as well. During the past 200 years, it constructed more than 300 lighthouses, provided for the relief of sick and disabled seamen, patrolled America's shores with armed revenue cutters, and helped protect the interests of American manufacturing.

The list of prominent persons who have held key Customs posts reflects the proud history of this invaluable Federal agency: President Ulysses S. Grant; Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick; Pat Garrett, the sheriff who apprehended Billy the Kid; Matthew Henson, who accompanied Admiral Peary on his Arctic expedition in 1909; the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson; and th enovelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each of these outstanding Americans was once on officer of the Customs Service.

Today, Customs continues to render vital service to our Nation by collecting revenue, protecting American companies and citizens from predatory trade practices and violation of intellectual property rights, and by detecting and preventing the entry into the United States of illegal drugs.

In recognition of the contributions of the Customs Service to our Nation, the Congress, by House Joint Resolution 363, has authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation designating 1989 as "United States Customs Service 200th Anniversary Year."

Now, Therefore, I, George Bush, President of the United States Customs Service 200th Anniversary Year. I call upon Government officials and the people of the United States to observe this year with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fourteenth.

GEORGE BUSH