Text B History of the U.S. Customs Service

The U.S. Customs Service has a long history. With ratification by the necessary number of states, the Constitution of the United States went into effect on March 4, 1789. A bit more than four months later, on July 31 of that year, the U.S. Customs Service started operating, among the very first of the feagencies to come to life. It was given a life-and-death mission.

The young nation was then on the brink of bankruptcy. The first Congress and President Washington agreed that the collection of duties on imported goods was essential if the United States were to survive.

Only a few days after Customs drew its first breath, on August 5, 1789, the power of the service went from theory to reality when Captain James Weeks sailed his brigatine, Persis, into New York harbor with a miscellaneous cargo from Leghorn, Italy. The duty on the cargo - the first such payment ever made to the United States Treasury - was $774.41.

While the payment was modest, it was the initial fiscal prop for a very young and shaky government. More was to come. In its first year of operation, the service collected over $2 million in duties. And for the next 124 years -- until that moment in 1913 when the amendment authorizing the income tax was approved -- customs remained a major source of revenue for the federal government. Thus the Customs Service, especially in the early years of the nation, proved the truth of that profound maxim: "the revenue of the state is the state."

As described in the strategic plan of the U.S.Customs, the agency faces five distinct strategic challenges. They are: the continued threat of narcotics smuggling, terrorists, the growth of world trade, the proliferation of trade agreements and general public resistance to increasing the budget of the federal government. (1500 symbols)

10.4.1 What do these numbers and dates mentioned in the text refer to: