Goodbye, Bandits

The $11 million-a-year slot-machine-manufacturing business was wiped out with one stroke of a pen last week. President Truman signed a bill banning the one-armed bandits from federal property and prohibiting their shipment in interstate commerce. As soon as the new law went into effect, the military began a roundup of machines in Army and Navy officers' clubs around the U.S. On the West Coast the Army dumped 300 machines into San Francisco Bay.

Although slot machines are already prohibited in every state except Nevada, Montana and Maryland (where they are legal in only four counties), illegal machines have been operating all over the U.S. They were all made by Chicago's Mills Industries Inc., O. D. Jennings & Co., and eight smaller Chicago companies, who also turned out jukeboxes and other coin machines. With slot-machine production stopped, the companies hoped to take up the slack with war contracts and legal vending machines. But none of them expect all the slot machines to disappear from clubs and roadhouses overnight. They last a long time, and some clubs, anticipating the law, bought enough to last ten years.

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