Coin Slot

and Coin
came
Chicago,
an ad
for O.C. Arcade
Lightner
publications .
Slot to
Magazine
- #023 answering
- 1976 - December
[International
Museum]
Otto Lightner, 'O.C/, had twentythree trade papers there. They were
little rags and included COUNTY AGENT and AMERICAN MARINE
ENGINEER. So I got some experience.
"I soon proposed to Lightner that we start a vending publication that
covered the whole field. Of course, everything was slots then. In those
days there were no good roads and if you went anywhere you went by
train. That meant that there were thousands and thousands of stores out
there that could be agents if you could reach them. But I couldn't get
Watling or Mills to advertise in that first year. Mills said 'why should I
advertise in my competition/ and Tom Watling told me, 'go out and get
yourself a reputation'. So we did, and at the end of the year both came in
the publication. Watling even wrote us a letter, and I published it.
"Let me tell you how the slot machine got started. The original slot ma
chine was not originally a gambling machine. Those cherries, plums and
so forth were to promote sales. In those days everything was cam and
lever, and then Charlie Fey made the first one. He had no market for it in
Australia, so he brought it over here. About 1886 he met two people in
Chicago, William Wrigley Sr. and Hub Mills. Everyone called H. S. Mills
'Hub'. Mills was making 'Liberty Bell' chewing gum. Wrigley said, 'No
Hub, I don't think we ought to get into that', so William Wrigley turned it
down. He was a college graduate and he had a penchant for passing up a
good thing. So H. S. Mills decided to go it alone. So what he didwas buy
the mechanism from Fey to sell the gum. By the time I was a kid there
was a LIBERTY BELL gum machine in every restaurant, drug store,
candy store and cigar shop around.
"Some time in there was the 1893 Fair in Chicago, and a new group of
people got in the business, one of which was Tom Watling. He started out
as a shill for Bonfils & Tammen and they liked him a lot. Tom was as
honest as the day is long and they could trust him, so later on they backed
him in business. If you want to read about those days read 'Timber Line'
by Gene Fowler, and the story of the DENVER POST. It's exciting read
ing. Hub Mills was already making his own machines, and soon learned
that people weren't taking the gum. The old lady got tired of Pa bringing
home so much gum. So they made machines without the gum where orig
inally the machines were intended to be a stimulator.
"There's only one man living from those days.
Bert Mills.
He was a
genius.
Frank Mills, Hub's brother, was a swashbuckler. You couldn't
put him behind a bench or a desk, but he was the best man of his time for
his kind of business. He went around the country and set things up for
Mills. He was noisy. Very successful. Charlie Jameson, he was called
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and their word was as good as their bond. Pace
'Mike', ran a string of slots as far north as Traverse City. He was a grifter,
a professional gambler. He played the three shell game. He really made
his money in Toledo, and had an outfit there called Lincoln Novelty
Works. I was a guest at his place at Stony Lake about 1928. Old Adolph
Caille was a very close friend of Henry Ford, and when he died he had a
funeral that would make a president jealous. The Watlings were 100%
honest,
was a guy that
didn't want any publicity. He had a lot of problems. Burnham had a
good business going and he had a lot of B & M machines out in cast iron
cabinets like the old Mills machines. Once Pat Buckly and I went into a
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