The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-04-26
AFTER The SLOT MACHINES.
The Solicitor General May Take Them
Before the Grand Jury.

He Thinks They Come Under the Lot
terry or Game of Chance Laws, and
is Making an tigation-Atlanta
Has Stopped Their Operations There
and Solicitor General Fraser Sounds
the Note of Warning.
1t seems that the nickel-in-the-slot ma
chine was born under an unlucky star.
Its almost universal popularity and its
appearance in almost every public place,
cigar store, bar or confectioners' shop,
has been perhaps responsible for the
trouble that has been and is about to be
brought upon it.
The machine came into vogue some
three or four years ago and sprang at
once into popular favor. First it would
weigh you and tell your age, then piece
of chocolate or chewing gum would curve
out at the touch of a spring. But the
manufacturers, with an eye for further
popularity for the machines in the provis-
ion of greater profits for the owner or
lessee, made a machine in which the OPP
orator could take his chances on getting
or not getting a cigar with the chances
greatly in favor or the lessee or owner Of
the machine.
But playing the machine for cigars
came to be a sort of tame game of chance,
and the manufacturers, with greater in
genuity devised a machine by which the
operator might get three, four or five
times the amount of his Investment in
cash, provided this nickle dropped in the
right box The machine is so constructed
that the owner or lessee always wins, the
chances being largely in his favor, as
| against the operator.
LOOKED UPON AS A LOTTERY.
The recently manufactured and more
violent form of the machine, that is. the
/ one in which the player always takes
| some chance of winning or losing, is
looked upon in many places as lottery,
| and in states where the lottery laws and
| laws with regard to games of chance are
| rather stringent the matter has been
! taken in hand by the courts.
The courts in Atlanta recently took the
matter up, and the proprietors of the
! slot machines said if they were declared
against the law they would all give them
! up. The matter was taken before the
! grand jury and an indictment found for
! test case. The offender was convicted of
running a lottery device, and upon this
| action all the slot machines went.
The same laws practically prevail in
! South Carolina, and the Charleston courts
| recently took hand in the matter and
! expelled them from that city.
NOTE OF WARNING.
Solicitor General Fraser announced
| yesterday that he had the matter of the
slot machines under investigation, and
the chances are, if the grand jury and the
courts sustain his opinion with regard to
the law in the case, they will have to
| leave Savannah also.
81 have been giving the matter consid-
cradle attention of late" said the solicit
| tor general, and l am convinced
| that the operation of such devices
is against the law. II has been declared
so in Atlanta by the state court there.
| have taken no positive action in the mat
| ter as yet, but merely want to make this
statement by way of warning, in the
hope that those devices of a chance or
gambling nature will be made away with
before any action in the matter becomes
necessary. 1t may be that little later if
they are still operated as freely as now |
| Will present the matter to the grand jury
to see if the evil cannot be abated
Il am told that Yamacrdw and the old
fort, as well as other places around the
city, are filed with them and that the
negroes many of them will drop their last
penny into one of these machines Just as
they play the policy lotteries and other
games of chance. So far as the law in
the case is concerned can see little diff
ference between the two cases. This is
the view of the matter have taken after
a careful consideration, and ] shall act
when the time comes