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Here's just something fun and interesting to
listen to. It's a short form,

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six and a half minute true story. It is a future release going to

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come out officially in a few months
on my second podcast, True Stories with

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Seth Andrews. That show's getting notice. We just crested three hundred and fifty

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thousand downloads on one hundred and fourteen
shows and we had billboards up around my

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hometown for four weeks. And you've
made that happen and it's just so exciting.

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So listen, enjoy, and then
go subscribe to True Stories with Seth

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Andrews on all major podcast apps,
and then share it on your social media

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and tell your family and friends about
its Help me get the word out.

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Today. Six and a half minute
feature is called The Slots of Sin.

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I'm Seth Andrews and what you're about
to hear is a true story. January

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twenty fourth, nineteen forty two,
New York City Police headquarters had received a

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surprise visit from the Mayor, Fiorello
LaGuardia, and the matter he wanted to

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discuss was an urgent one. There
was an enemy of the people out there.

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It threatened the city and state of
New York and even the entire United

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States, its economy, its morality, its future. It was slot machines.

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Gambling was a vice, a sin
of blots on polite society, and

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Mayor LaGuardia issued the order every available
patrolman was to report for duty to conduct

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a raid on a local establishment that
had slot machine gambling going on inside its

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walls. I guess every general ration
has seen its moral panic. We saw

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the prohibition of alcohol in the nineteen
twenties. In the decades after that,

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the media was literally whitewashed. So
many things were forbidden to be shown on

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television, including toilets. In the
mid twentieth century, you could not show

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a toilet on TV. Married couples, they couldn't be in the same bed,

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even fully clothed preparing for sleep.
No, no, they had to

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be placed in separate twin beds.
Elvis Presley performed his music on the Ed

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Sullivan television show, but the cameras
would only show him from the waist up

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because his gyrating legs were far too
suggestive and sexual. Comic books weren't immune

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from moral panic. Graphic novels considered
too sinister were often rounded up and tossed

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into piles and set on fire.
And gambling, oh no, gambling was

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definitely frowned upon. Mayor Laguardium had
been on a long crusade. He used

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to be a congressman after the First
World War. He actually introduced a failed

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gambling prohibition back in the nineteen thirties, and then he ran for mayor and

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part of his platform was against slot
machines. He called this quote a citizens

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movement for the salvation of the city. His message to New York was clear,

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the slots perpetuate the sin. And
part of what drove this opposition to

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gambling was the whole idea of playing
games where your fate is left to blind

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luck. There's no skill involved whatsoever, It's all chance. You're essentially casting

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lots. Your chances of winning are
slim, and with those slot machines that

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flashed and beeped and mesmerized, the
public would be hypnotized into wickedness and waste.

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Now, it's true that there was
kind of a dark side to some

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of this. The mafia had found
a way to use these machines to make

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and launder money. And of course, nobody could say that these slot machines

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weren't addictive people standing there for long
periods of time locked in that spot,

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sometimes ignoring their responsibilities as they fed
the beast and bled their pockets and wallets

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and bank accounts dry. Oh no, Mayor LaGuardia wasn't going to have any

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of this, and as Mayor of
New York, he finally got his great

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excuse to nix the slot machines just
after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Aha.

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The United States was at war.
We were in a war footing.

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We needed every resource, including the
metal that was used to make slot machines.

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Slots were superfluous. We needed that
medal for armor and guns and bullets.

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And so the war on slots carried
through the early nineteen forties, so

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many police raids. Every other day
they would bust into a new operation and

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seize hundreds of these machines and confiscate
maybe ten thousand dollars a week that sometimes

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suspiciously got put into a police pension
fund. Oh yeah, that sounds like

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a racket. Police warehouses filled up
with these confiscated machines. The NYPD held

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public press conferences showing off their confiscations. In fact, there was one newsreel

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with Mayor LaGuardia with a sledgehammer and
he was smashing a slot machine two bits.

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Other cities also jumped on this bandwagon
with their own bands, Chicago,

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Portland, Los Angeles, Boston,
and others. Some of these bands went

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on for decades. The New York
band was not overturned until nineteen seventy six,

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when an expert did a demonstration before
the New York City Council showing them

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that no, these were not just
games of blind luck, but in fact

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a player actually needed a measure of
skill. And so in nineteen seventy six

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those machines were finally deemed at least
somewhat acceptable, certainly legal. But the

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moral panickers and the pulpit pounders and
the harbingers of doom continued to cry foul

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against those insidious gambling boxes, the
devices of debasement, those very specific types

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of slot machine devils that were draining
pockets and dragging society into the thick mire

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of moral decay. Pinball machines and
the story of the American twentieth century War

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on pinball is a true story True
Stories podcast dot Com