Marketplace

MARKETPLACE
PICTORIAL HISTORY
PAGE 55, MARCH, 1976
Addendum
As the 20th century came into being, urban populations had begun to explode. In just
10 years, New York City had over 1.5 million people with almost another million in
Brooklyn. There were over a million people in both Chicago and Philadelphia. Boston,
Baltimore and St. Louis had each surpassed the half million mark. For example, from
1890 to 1900, Denver had grown from 4,700 to over 107,000 poeple while Minneapolis jumped
from 13,000 to over 165,000 population.
The nation's industrial growth was fantastic. With thousands of inunigrants pouring
into the big cities and with many farm boys leaving the farms, the fast growing cities
and towns became important territory for the slot machine manufacturers • .Furthermore,
the lack of jobs and the many problems labor was having trying to get organized, opened
,a new market, especially for II. s. Mills and his Mills Novelty Company. lie began to
build simple counter games at a very low price that attracted much new blood into the
coin machine business. The manufacturers realized that the huge slots they were produc-
ing were too big and too expensive for this new market growing up around them.
Mills, Watling and Caille didn't stop producing their huge color wheel slots but
each knew, even during the very first years of the 20th century, that something en-
tirely new and different was needed if they were to continue to grow and be able to
keep step with the nation's exploding population. The fast expanding cities and towns
all over the country were wide open, beckoning markets for the manufacturers. And then
everything came together to turn about the slot ma.chine business.
For example, the saloons, restaurants and other businesses being
were mostly contained in small, rented stores. Few had the room for
ines. They knew the moneymaking power of the slot machines and were
with the fact these could attract and hold patrons in their places.
the space for the huge slot machines being produced.
opened by immigrants,
the huge slot mach-
also well acquainted
They just ditl't have
In the meantime, in addition to the slots and counter games, all sorts of amusement
machines, venders and coin operated musical instruments were being introduced into the
many thousands of locations all over the nation. The market for coin operated machines
of all types was expanding with leaps and bounds. Most fantastic growth was being en-
joyed by the Penny Arcades that had first come into being in the 1880s.
It was a great new, brave new beginning for this industry as it entered into the 20th
century. The slot machine manufacturers were trying desperately to develop something
new and different. They didn't find it in their own factories. They didn't develop it
themselves. They discovered it, quite by accident, on the west coast - in old and f a s-
c'inating San Francisco - and a new industry was born.