Country of Origin Mark

[Dwight Gruber]

Conventional wisdom within the Luger collecting community has it that the GERMANY export mark was stamped on Lugers which were to be sent to â??English-speaking countries.â?� Sometimes it is off-handedly referred to by the purported name of some particular legislation. Unsatisfied with being unable to make the actual citation, I decided to track it down.

Antique collecting sources I found commonly refer to the â??McKinley Tariff Act of 1891â?� although some sources date it to 1890. Walter (The Luger Book) makes reference to the â??U.S. Firearms Act of 1890.â?�

This seemed to me to be pretty sloppy, so I headed off to my local library. It took a couple of trips, but I was finally ableâ??with the kind assistance of the libraryâ??s research staffâ??to track down the legislation.

It was passed on October 1, 1890, and titled â??AN ACT to reduce the revenue and equalize duties on imports, and other purposes.â?� The act itself is mostly an exhaustive listing of the kinds of materials imported into the US, and the import duty levied for each.

Many, many pages into the legislation one comes to a margin reference â??Articles usually marked, etc., not admitted unless marked with country of originâ?� which denotes the pertinent paragraph:

â??Section 6: That on and after the first of March eighteen hundred and ninety one [1891], all articles of foreign manufacture, such as are usually or ordinarily marked, stamped, branded, or labeled, and all packages containing such or other imported articles, shall respectively, be stamped, branded, or labeled in legible English words, so as to indicate the country of their origin; and unless so marked, stamped, branded, or labeled they shall not be admitted to the country.â?�

Note particularly that, although the Act was passed in 1890, the country of origin requirement was not to be implemented until 1891â??thus the confusion in the antique collecting community. Walter simply gets it wrong.

I am still doing research on this topic, but I thought you all might find this part interesting.

Source:
U.S. Statutes at Large
Volume 26 Dec. 1889â??March 1891
(p.567 begin Chap. 1244) p.613 Section 6
U.S. Government Printing Office 1891

--Dwight