Levi Woodbury

“ It is so as much as butter or cheese is a manufacture from animal milk, or tar from turpentine, and rosin from tar. Yet from the words of the law, as well as its design, it is manifest that the India-rubber is not meant to be taxed as a manufacture, though so hardened and changed, unless, at the same time, it is put into a shape which is suitable for use, and adapted with a design to be used in a way that is calculated to rival some domestic manufacture here, rather than merely to furnish a raw material in a more portable, useful, and convenient form for other manufactures here. ”

“ Thus, although this act of Congress clearly meant to impose a duty of thirty per cent. on shoes imported, which had been made in part from India-rubber after it had been hardened and fashioned into some crude shape in South America, yet we have no doubt it might likewise intend to impose this duty on shoes made abroad wholly from India-rubber while in its liquid state, and especially if, when so made, such shoes were in a condition to be worn without further material labor on them here, and were made to be so worn, and were in this form often actually worn. ”

“ So lead may be melted into the shape of pigs or bars, for exportation and for foreign manufacture, or be run into weights, for use as weights, and then be regarded as already a manufacture for that purpose.
It is another evidence that shoes composed wholly of India-rubber were considered by Congress as a manufactured article, that they place them in that category in the tariff with other clearly manufactured articles, while they place in the category of those unmanufactured such articles as are not in a shape to be used much, if at all, without being made up into new forms. ”