Location-Thirty-eight
Despite a short post war boom in the automatic field
things went very badly for the parent Mills company.
Important deals relating to the manufacture of
Coca-Cola vending machines , and juke boxes
specifically the Panorama which incorporated a film
cassette unit were badly mismanaged , resulting in great
financial loss to the company. By 1948 although still
solvent Mills Industries was experiencing great
difficulties in meeting its obligations. It was put into a
protracted state of receivership and in 1954 was finally
liquidated. As Fred Mills later explained: " We were
forced into Chapter Eleven bankruptcy and lost
propriety to the products and the patents. We had to
shrink everything down to liquidate. The guy who was
brought in to do the job was ruthless , he just got rid of
everything , the huge factory premises , ail the fine
equipment. The people who bought it stripped it-down
and made about $2,000,000. In 1941 the business had
been valued at $10,000,000. It was a great shame ,_ a
a great loss" . Despite the demise of the parent
company the Bell-O-Matic Corporation managed to
survive and prosper in the bleak years to corne .
As this instance shows the late 1940s and early 1950s,
despite an initial post war boom , were to be no golden
age for the manufacturers. A new wave of
anti-gambling fervour swept the nation following
investigations into racketeering , but in many ways
fostered by the rising, ultra conservative McCarthyist
ascendancy in America. A Federal Bill was proposed
which among other things sought to ban the interstate
shipment of gambling machines-a move disastrous in
its implications to the manufacturing industry .
In response to this the industry united in December
1949 to form the American Coin Machine
Manufacturers' Association , with Herb Jones of the
Bally Manufacturing Company as its president. Its aim
was "to work for the good of the en tire industry" . The
effort was futile . In January 1951 the Johnson Bill
became law. It enacted that any violators of the law
would face a $5,000 fine and two years in prison. The
law effectively made it illegal to manufacture ,
recondition , repair, sell, transport , possess , or use any
gambling device in any land under the exclusive
Federal Jurisdiction. The manufacturers worst fears
had corne true. In February of that year Herb Jones
was quoted by the trade joumals as saying , rather
lamely: "So far as I know ail manufacturers affected by
the bill have already stopped making them . They
stopped last week" . He added that some of the
manufacturers were going into defence production for
the Korean war.
The law also enacted that any state wishing to exempt
itself from the Federal Bill was able to enact a special
law to this end , and thus permit the shipping of gaming
devices into its area. This might have raised some hopes
since two states Nevada and Maryland were to settle for
this option. However they were soon dashed for the
Chicago-based manufacturers following the passing of a
law by the Illinois State Legislature prohibiting ail out
of state shipments. As a token of defeat the short lived
American Coin Machine Manufacturers' Association
was dissolved to a backdrop of intensive F.B.I. activity
against unlawful interstate trafficking of machines.
The Chicago based manufacturing companies that
could not move had no option but to switch to new
production lines or go out of business. The 1950s
therefore were very lean years for the automatic
gambling machine in America with few companies of
any note left in the manufacturing field .
In 1931 the State Legislature of Nevada had passed a
bill which legalised ail forms of gambling , except
lottery , within the state. It was passed at a time when
the minerai mines , which were the main industry in the
state, had become uneconomic due to the depression .
The new law was seen as a way of attracting people and
business into the state. In the eyes of the national press
it was seen as an experiment that was bound to fail.
However in the pre-war years the growth of Nevada as
a gambling centre remained retarded , but as the
anti-gambling laws in the rest of America grew
progressively stricter, culminating in the Johnson Act
of 1951 , Nevada and especially the towns of Reno and
Las Vegas became an increasingly attractive
proposition for the diverse elements connected with the
gambling industry. As a consequence its real
development as a national gambling centre dates only
from the immediate post war years. It was in Nevada
1960 JENNINGS BUCKAROO