Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1906-01-03

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!. slot machine, and finally thev bought
nearly all my cough lozengers, and
: went out into the night, and pa and ]
went along, cause pa said he under.
stood all the slot machines were
owned by Rockefeller, and he made
more money on them than he did on
STANDARD oil, and the money that he
gave away to schools and churches
was. from his rake-olf on his slot ma
chimes. Pa said it would be a good
tn1ng II someone could break up the
reprehensible practice by beating the
Dlasted machines to a finish.
so pa he got bag to bring back the
nlckels In, and bunch of US went to
q store where one whole side Of the
place was filled with slot machines.
and the way the people were playing
the game was scanda!ous Pa watched
a machine until the players had fed Il
so IL seemed as though it would die un-
less 1t got air, and ne stepped up and
put IN lozenger and turned the wheel
and held the bag under the spout for
the coin, but it didn't come. Soma
more fellows put in uickels, and the
machine gave little hacking coughs and
coughed up three or four nickels, but
nothing that seemed at all in the
nature of financial hemmorague.
when pa took another lozenger and
put 1t in, and by ginger the machine
began to heave UP nickels like it was
In the trough Of The sea.
Pa was so excited he forgot to hold
the bag, and nickels went all over the
floor, and everybody made a grab for
them, and pa was showed aside, and he
swore he would have the place pulled,
and just then a law officer took pa in
charge because he had put cough loz-
enger in the slot machine, and he
searched pa and found lot moro
bronchial trochees. and pa was in for
1t on charge of malpractice, for CIV
Ing cough medicine for the stomach
trouble of the slot machine, instead of
pepsin tablets.
They took pa in back room and
searched him some more, and found
his roll, and then man who said he
was lawyer offered to help pa. and
keep him out of the penitentiary. He
told pa the law Of Kentucky made the
crime of trifling with slot machine
the same as breach of promise, or ar
son, and that he would be lucky If he
got off with ten years in the pen, with
80 days solitary confinement in a
Turkish bath cell, with niggers for
companions.
Pa turned blue and asked the lawer
lawyer told him that for $40 in spot
cash he would let him go, and fight
the case after the show had got out
of the state. A hundred and twenty
five dollars was the amount they found
on pa, and he told them that inasmuch
as they already had it, they better
keep the money and let him go, and
he would be always a living example
Of the terrors of gambling.
So they let pa go. and all the way
to the train he told us he hoped this
experience would be lesson to us not
TO covet the money of the rich. and as
far as he was concerned, John D.:
Rockefeller could go plum to thunder
with his money after this.
Then we got to the car, and found
about dozen of the circus men who
had been out to beat the slot machines.
broke fiat. and had to divide my shot
bag of nickels with them, that I had
won before let them into the game,
before they would let me go to bed
Dad says this circus life is making
me pretty tough.