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Show The 'One-Arm Bandit' Menace Senator Edwin C. Johnson (D.-Colo.), the nation's most vigilant vig-ilant watchdog of public morals so he would have us believe urged Sunday that "Congress pass an anti-slot machine bill immediately and investigate general crime afterwards," according ac-cording to an AP news story. If able to get past the legislative legis-lative hurdle, the bill, in its present form, will "outlaw manufacture man-ufacture of gambling devices in states where they are prohibited and forbid their shipment into such states. It would not apply where they are legal." The object of the bill, of course, is to keep manufacturers manufactur-ers and owners of slots from distributing them in states which outlaw gambling. Senator Johnson, as you will remember, is the august Colorado Colora-do legislator who recently demanded de-manded that an investigation be made into Hollywood morals, following the Bergman - Rosse-lini Rosse-lini affair, both of which, incidentally, inci-dentally, many believe Is none of tho Senator's business, In striking at the slot machine racket, the Senator has placed himself out on another limb. Anti-slot machine legislation, if passed, would probably be about as effective as prohibition during dur-ing the twenties. In 1948 the American' public threw three billion dollars down the "one-arm bandits." This figure fig-ure is a fairly good estimate of how much the gullible American Ameri-can public spends each year in an effort to hit the jackpot. Still, the gambling instinct runs deep in man'. Such vices as gambling, drinking, and the like cannot be ignored, nor can they be abolished. History has taught us that much. But they can be controlled for the public good. The alcoholic beverage industry in-dustry is today one of the most respected branches of American business. Its attitude toward drinking is to encourage the wise use of alcohol and to discourage dis-courage the patronage of exces- sive drinkers, who have always given the industry a black eye. In the meantime the industry is one of the nation's biggest taxpayers. (During prohibition days, in contrast, bootlegging of alcohol was a national racket, law - enforcement officers had their hands full trying to keep it under control, and the nation received nothing1 in the way of taxes from these illegal channels.) chan-nels.) The Rocky Mountain region is one of the slot machine trouble trou-ble spots, even though all the states have outlawed gambling, with the exception of Nevada hardly one of the mountain states. Colorado, for eample, is infested everv summer bv slot machines in public places to catch the tourists in many of the state's small resort towns. The county sheriffs and other law-enforcement officers wink at the racket, the result being that some of the officers and all of the machine owners and ap-erators ap-erators profit handsomely, while the state treasury gets absolutely absolute-ly nothing. The racket flourishes in these towns, principally because public pub-lic opinion' is behind it. The people realize that their livelihood liveli-hood is built around the summer sum-mer tourist trade, and that the tourists can't resist the "one-arm "one-arm bandits." Therefore, anything any-thing to keep more and more money- flowing into their town, the people consider permissable. Most of ' t h e county sheriffs would stand little chance of reelection re-election if they tried to stand in the way of profit, But the slot machine racket is by no means localized. All over the country illegal fortunes for-tunes are made each year; murder mur-der and lesser crimes are rampant. ram-pant. If legalized and taxed heavily, the slots could be partially controlled, con-trolled, and the respective states could use millions of dollars in tax money each year for needy purposes. GWH |