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Diamond v. Chakrabarty [447 U.S. 303, 1980]
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[PRODUCT] {1} [a case dealing with import duties] We are of opinion that the shells in question here were not manufactured, and were not manufactures of shells within the sense of the statute imposing a duty of 35 percent upon such manufactures, but were shells not manufactured, and fell under that designation in the free list. They were still shells. They had not been manufactured into a new and different article having a distinctive name, character, or use from that of a shell. The application of labor to an article either by hand or by mechanism does not make the article necessarily a manufactured article within the meaning of that term as used in the tariff laws. Washing and scouring wool does not make the resulting wool a manufacture of wool. Cleaning and ginning cotton does not make the resulting cotton a manufacture of cotton. In Schedule M of § 2504 of the Revised Statutes, p. 475, 2d ed., a duty of 30 percent ad valorem is imposed on "coral, cut or manufactured," and in § 2505, p. 484, "coral, marine, unmanufactured" is made exempt from duty. These provisions clearly imply that but for the special provision imposing the duty on cut coral, it would not be regarded as a manufactured article although labor was employed in cutting it. In Frazee v. Moffitt, 20 Blatchford 267, it was held that hay pressed into bales, ready for market, was not a manufactured article, though labor had been bestowed in cutting and drying the grass and baling the hay. In Lawrence v. Allen, 7 How. 785, it was held that India-rubber shoes, made in Brazil by simply allowing the sap of the India-rubber tree to harden upon a mould, were a manufactured article because it was capable of use in that shape as a shoe, and had been put into a new form capable of use and designed to be used in such new form. In United States v. Potts, 5 Cranch 284, round copper plates turned up and raised at the edges from four to five inches by the application of labor to fit them for subsequent use in the manufacture of copper vessels, but which were still bought by the pound as copper for use in making copper vessels, were held not to be manufactured copper. In the case of United States v. Wilson, 1 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 167, Judge Betts held that marble which had been cut into blocks for the convenience of transportation was not manufactured marble, but was free from duty as being unmanufactured.
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