May, 1938
AUTOMATIC AGE
Dear Operators:
This month the “ Old Coinsorter” himself, (re
member?) returns to take up the story where he
left off more than a year ago. In order to catch
up on correspondence at one stroke this blanket
letter to thousands of coin machine operators
ought to do the trick.
Does it sort of sweep you off your feet to hear
me say “ thousands of operators” ? You didn’t
know there were thousands of you fellows left?
Well, danged if I wasn’t kind of surprised myself.
Sometime back I looked through a copy of the
“ Bullboard” and almost got tears in my eyes to
read how it was sympathizin’ with the poor old
coin machine business, how it was pleading with
merchants and locations to please let the forlorn
and starving operator stay in business, (now can
you beat that?— after it has been the operator
who has made it possible for forlorn and starving
storekeepers to keep their doors open?). So then
I visited a few coin machine factories, and every
thing was so quiet everywhere that I wondered
if the lunch hour had been changed to three
o’clock, but later learned that the workers had not
had a lunch hour for several weeks, which is bad
for the official gentlemen of the government who
try to keep employment figures from looking too
lousy, not to mention being bad for the great and
glorious coin machine business. And after that,
I looked into the legal ramifications of the coin
machine biz a bit and got some more sour notes.
Well, about that time I takes a quick guess and
figures that all the smart operators have probably
joined up with the W. P. A. Such operators being
smart for two reasons, one to be a jump ahead
of the fanatics and reformers who might declare
the peanut vender a gambling device because it
gives one feller 26 peanuts and the next customer
only 19, and the other reason being so they could
collect around $600 per year for the vote they
cast in the next election, that is, assuming that
nobody will think up a reason more important
than $600 for having them vote the other way.
Anyway, a smart operator is one who could still
© International Arcade Museum
13
take care of his route after leaning on a shovel
for a few hours each day.
Well, as I was going to say, before I got all
mixed up with how some folks keep government
jobs, I decided that the way to find out if there
were any coin machine operators left was to con
sult the AUTOMATIC AGE subscription list.
Sympathizers and blues singers, not to mention
blue noses, notwithstanding, there are still SEV
ERAL THOUSAND PROGRESSIVE COIN MA
CHINE OPERATORS reading A. A., and only
a few hundred less than during the hey dey of
the $19 pin games, when every ice man, laundry
man, soap salesman, and meter reader was oper
ating a few of the magic boxes. (We could never
get those “ smart” new bloods to pay a buck in
order to find out something about the business.
THEY KNEW ALL ABOUT IT!)
So, it looks from where I am like the operators
are holding their own pretty well, in numbers.
What they are holding in addition to holding
their own, is the bag. It’s the same bag they
have been holding for a long time, the only dif
ference being that it gets bigger all the time— it
is still just as empty. So, it is a cinch bet that
none of you fellers who used to find money in
your boxes, and locations for your machines, have
been fooled quite as much as the said “ Bullboard”
and some of its chief supporters would like to
believe. Operators who have been “ sold down
the river” know pretty well what has been going
on. They know which of the remaining greats
and near greats of the manufacturing circles have
shown interest, (if any), in whether the oper
ating fraternity thrives or “ dives.” Furthermore,
operators will be mighty quick to recognize AND
PATRONIZE any factory which comes forward
and demonstrates that maybe the coin machine
operator wasn’t such a bad feller after all.
Speakin’ about said subscription list, it was
most surprisin’ of all to find that more than 500
new members have joined the coin machine in
dustry during the past few months. New blood
and new capital is supposed to be a rare article
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