As it’s 19 June, we could examine the doing in of Edward II’s ‘friend’ Piers Gaveston on this date in 1312, but that wouldn’t be much fun, so instead let’s celebrate the time Atlanta, Georgia banned pinball, starting a trend which spread to several other US cities.
Not enough room for alt text, so here it all is, just in case:
‘GAME OF SKILL’ MACHINES BANNED. Parents and Teachers Cheer Council; Will Go Into Effect July 1. Pin ball and similar “game of skill” machines were outlawed in Atlanta yesterday afternoon by city council, which, yielding to the pressure of mothers and teachers, voted without a single recorded “nay” to ban the machines, effective July 1. Mayor Hartsfield, surrounded in his office by a cluster of P.-T. A. representatives, signed the measure into law within 20 minutes after its passage in council. Action on the measure designed to stop the electrical click-click of more than 800 game-of-skill machines in the city came with dramatic swiftness when Councilman E. A. Minor, chairman of the ordinance committee, which had unanimously recommended passage of the bill, appealed to the council to adopt it for the protection of the children of Atlanta.
Councilman Minor employed the kind of restrained and rational rhetoric which still distinguishes much political discourse.
These machines, which you can find on every corner in this city, are tending to encourage a moral degeneration among children.
Well, that doesn’t sound too bad, but…
I know of a case where a mother gave her son $1.30 to pay the water bill and the boy shot a large part of it away on a pin ball machine. Then he told his mother an untruth about it.
Which is, indeed, An Outrage Against Decency — which is presumably what prompted:
These machines lead to gambling and stealing and killing and eventually to a rope around the neck for someone.
Yes, always good to hear some Plain Common Sense. Well, thankfully, that wasn’t going to happen any more, because the
new law provides a fine of $200 and 30 days in the stockade for either owning or possessing a pin ball or similar machine after July 1
— which was the least those Absolute Monsters deserved, clearly.
In December, Los Angeles followed suit (also outlawing “scoop claws and similar devices”), leading to this photo being published in the L. A. Times the following year.
In 1948, apparently, a plainclothes New York cop enjoyed several games in a Harlem cigar store before arresting the owner for “unlawful possession of a gambling machine”.
Many of the bans stayed on the books for decades, with L.A.’s remaining in place until 1974, and New York’s still covering hotels, cinemas and bars until 1976, meaning that pinball came back just when video games were starting to arrive and render them obsolete.
Thus, the list of things that America has banned includes wrestling bears (Alabama), “sexual contact with an animal, bird, or dead person” (North Dakota), kissing on Sundays (Connecticut), and pinball, but not guns. Obviously. That would be ridiculous.
