Mr. HARRIS. As a lawyer, would my colleague agree with me that it is a pretty far-reaching term and many things that are determined in the States to be honorable and legal and are permitted in business and by good business people and good citizens, at the same time can become a game of chance if people want to make it that?

Mr. PRESTON. Well, I have not quite found out to what the gentleman is referring, whether you are referring to amusement machines, punchboards, or lotteries.

Mr. HARRIS. All such kinds, or it might be a pinball machine, and it might be one of these punchboards or some contraption that they will put up on the counters. It might be a pool table and it might be a bowling alley, and it could be a football game, and it could be any kind of a game where the people want to, if they so desire, make it a game of chance. That is what I am talking about, because it is a question of people gambling on something.

Now, if it could be reached by legislation, I certainly would be glad to know just what the approach is. Human beings in this country appreciate in their own minds some type of chance; but where the gambling phase of it starts and where the real American spirit of the old game of chance stops is the problem that I want explained here, as to the intentions of the proposal.

Mr. PRESTON. I would like to say that this is not, as one early authority on crime suggested, a "blue-nosed crusade." The purpose in striking at slot machines is that, among other things, it is a heartless way of gambling, and it does not give a man even a decent break at gambling. There is a certain desire in every man to take some chance, and this is not an effort to wipe out every form of gambling, and it does not strike at athletic contests or things of that sort, but this refers to mechanical devices.

Mr. HARRIS. You have mechanical devices connected with sports events, and you have mechanical devices in a great many things. You have Coca-Cola machines

Mr. PRESTON. Now, the gentleman is an able lawyer, and I am sure that he would not

Mr. HARRIS. Just wait until I get through.

Now, you have Coca-Cola machines, and these little restaurants where you want to put in a coin and get a piece of pie or your lunch, a bottle of milk, music machines, pinball machines for recreation purposes, carnivals that have necessarily many of these things that are considered to be legal, because they go from one State to the other and all around without being bothered.

The parts used, as I understand it-and I do know a lot of these, because I have had these matters to face me as an official, as to what is illegal and what is not illegal. So far as the slot machines, there is no question in the world about it. But the parts thereof that become so interchangeable, how are you going to distinguish those from the mechanical parts that go into that?

Mr. PRESTON. I did not anticipate your statement when I interrupted you, I am sorry. I thought that you were going to suggest that vending machines were covered.

Mr. HARRIS. There is no question about my being in opposition to the slot-machine racket, and I want you to thoroughly understand that. Mr. PRESTON. I quite agree with that.

Mr. HARRIS. But our supreme court in Arkansas has decided the question of pinball machines. That is a part of this coinage manufacturing industry, of course, and in some instances they were held to be illegal and were illegal. In other instances they are not. But we have parts interchangeable here.

Now, that is just a problem like that, that I think we should get cleared up, and not do injustice to a lot of business people, honorable and good citizens.

Mr. PRESTON. I would be very glad to be heard on that point, and I may say to the gentleman that I thought you were going to suggest that vending machines were covered in this legislation, which, of course, they are not. Any type of legitimate machine is not covered in either of these bills.

Mr. SCOTT. Including amusement machines? They are not covered, either?

Mr. PRESTON. Now, I do not think in my bill they are. In the Senate bill there might be a question about that, as to whether amusement machines would or not. I am of the opinion that they are not, that is my opinion, but that is purely an individual opinion.

Mr. HARRIS. How would you distinguish, then, what you refer to as an amusement machine?

Mr. PRESTON. That is a pinball machine.

Mr. HARRIS. Do you propose to get to that, too, to make that a violation of the law and covered by this?

Mr. PRESTON. In the bill which I introduced, it does not reach to those machines.

Mr. HARRIS. That is where I disagree with the gentleman. It is a mechanical device. It is adapted for playing a game, recreation and amusement. But you and I could go, and I have watched it in drug stores all around over my district that I represent, two or more people will go in and they will play that game, and it is a chance, and they will gamble on it, the two of them. Now, there are two other people that. will go there for the purpose of playing it for amusement, and they do not gamble on it.

We have had the problem of where they tried to operate them by giving a little something on the machine by saying, "If you make a certain score, then you are entitled to something else," and they pay it out of the cash register. We got after that. It was a violation of the law, and we stopped it.

Then some hit on the method of giving free games. Well, as long as they got free games and nothing else out of it, it became an amusement. Then when certain people who just have that spirit of chance in their heart and soul, that want to play the game of amusement and then gamble between themselves, that is a game of chance. I do not know about other States, but I believe in my State this would reach it. Mr. PRESTON. Well, the Supreme Court of the United States has not held that a free game is a thing of value, and the test of the Senate bill-it puts two rules in it. In the first section of the bill they define gambling device, and they first say it means

any machine or mechanical device, or parts thereof, designed or adapted for gambling

and second

or any use by which the user as a result of the application of any element of chance may become entitled to receive, directly or indirectly, anything of value.

Mr. HARRIS. Are you reading from your bill?

Mr. PRESTON. No, from the Senate bill.

Now, the Supreme Court of the United States has held in four instances that if you get a free game on the pinball machine it is not a thing of value. It is something that is free and of no material value whatsoever, and consequently it is not a gambling device.

Mr. HARRIS. But if two people use that themselves as a gambling device, then the device itself then becomes a gambling device?

Mr. PRESTON. By the same argument the gentleman advances, the coin you carry in your pocket would become a gambling device.

Mr. HARRIS. That is exactly what I am talking about, the very difficult problem here that you have of just what it will reach, what it will

cover.

Now, that is a thing that I think we should consider.

Mr. PRESTON. The rule of common sense would apply to surely eliminate any item which is commonly known by common knowledge and common usage and common custom to be a thing of amusement rather than primarily a thing used for gambling purposes.

Mr. HARRIS. As a good lawyer, I think the gentleman would understand, in matters highly technical, it is not the rule of common sense that applies when you get an investigative officer after you.

Mr. PRESTON. There, of course, would be some instances where the decision would have to be had to determine whether the law covered it. Mr. HARRIS. That is the point I am trying to make here.

Mr. PRESTON. As far as carnivals are concerned, the devices commonly used by carnivals that go around to the county fairs, I do not see anything here to include vending machines and Coca-Cola and cigarettes, and things of that sort, I do not see why we should concern ourselves with the gambling devices these carnival people carry, because they are worse than one-armed bandits and they take the country bumpkins over for large sums because they are stacked and controlled. There are wheels and devices and ball games that they have, and they are worse than slot machines.

Mr. O'HARA. Would this bill include bingo?

Mr. PRESTON. I do not think it would include bingo.

Mr. HARRIS. There would be no mechanical devices in connection with bingo. I was thinking about the one where you call the numbers out, and you put your coin or something, or your corn, under a certain. letter or on a certain number.

Mr. O'HARA. Of course, in the operations, as I recall it, in attending charity fairs and that sort of thing, they put the balls in a bucket and turn it around, and that would be a device of chance, I would think.

Mr. PRESTON. You could shake them up in a fruit jar just as well. Mr. HARRIS. I hope you understand the reason for the questioning that I have done here. I wonder if the gentleman has ever looked into a slot machine and compared it with a pinball machine, with a Coca-Cola machine, with various types of machines that are used; and I understand I have never seen one-that you can in some places come into a filling station and drop your coins in and be served with gasoline. I wonder if the gentleman has ever had occasion to look at those slots and those mechanical devices in connection with these various operations.

Mr. PRESTON. I have looked at every available type of machine. I am not an expert on the construction of these.

Mr. HARRIS. Did you look at the inside of it?

Mr. PRESTON. I looked inside to see how they could be rigged up where a slot machine will not pay off a penny. I have looked at the very intricate mechanism.

Mr. HARRIS. And then you can rig it up where it will pay every penny that you can put in there.

Mr. PRESTON. It is completely controlled by the operator.
Mr. HARRIS. That is the vending part of it.

Mr. PRESTON. I have looked inside Coca-Cola machines, and there is one movement involved in getting a drink. Your nickel goes in, and a slight turn is made on a wheel which makes the drink available. But a slot machine is a very intricate thing, as the gentleman knows. I cannot conceive that the parts would be interchangeable.

Mr. HARRIS. The gentleman, I suggest, should look at the place the coin goes in, in both machines, and see the first turn of the mechanical device, and whether or not they are interchangeable parts.

I think it can be reached, as I understand, but I do think that to set up a broad definition here by just saying anything designed by which there might be a game of chance, we had better be just a little bit careful or we will go further than we expect. So I have got to recognize that law-enforcing officers should use good common sense in trying to carry out at least the spirit of the law.

Mr. PRPSTON. The Congress was faced with this same proposition of being disturbed about going too far when the alcohol question came up, the alcohol tax law, because when you passed the law which said you cannot sell sugar to a man who is going to manufacture liquor, the Members of Congress said, "What about a man who wants to buy 100 pounds of sugar to mix up mash to feed his hogs?" And the final result was that you have got to use common sense in the proposition, and when a man has a reputation of being a liquor dealer, and he is buying excessive sugar, we will assume he is making liquor. When it is sent to the Coca-Cola Co., we will assume it is going to be a vending machine.

Mr. HARRIS. And when they approached the narcotic problem and the liquor problem, they made that a violation of the law, did they not? Mr. PRESTON. That is right.

Mr. HARRIS. They did not have a broad definition that would cover the entire lot, but they covered alcohol and those things, beverages, and so forth. In the narcotics business they covered narcotics, did they not? Now, you say here you are trying to get slot machines. Why do you not say "slot machines"?

Mr. PRESTON. I think when you say "slot machines," that immediately you would exempt a machine known as a console, which is an electrically operated machine that does not have the same design at all, and it is entirely different when it is operated and you do not pull a lever on it; a slot machine is known as a machine in which you insert a coin and pull a level to activate the mechanism.

Mr. HARRIS. Why would you not say "similar games and devices," then?

Mr. PRESTON. I think you would come right back to where you started if you do that. I think you would be right back where we

are now.

Mr. HARRIS. Why do you not say "devices which are violations of law in the States where the shipment is made"?

Mr. PRESTON. That might be good language, I would not know. Mr. HARRIS. I am merely trying to seek an answer to this problem here that we feel is a very great problem.

Mr. HINSHAW. I would like to comment on that point, because here is the report of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which calls attention to the fact that

the bill is so broad that it would establish a criminal liability on the part of any public carrier which transported machinery with knowledge of its intended use for the playing of any game of chance or for money. While such knowledge would be an essential element of the crime, and there might be difficulty in proving that element in the prosecution of the carrier, nevertheless carriers might be put to a considerable burden in trying to avoid possible prosecution for violation of the statutes.

In other instances where Congress has prohibited movement of certain articles in interstate commerce, the acts have been made expressly inapplicable to carriers. For example, in the statute involving misbranded woolen goods, the following provision was included:

"This section shall not apply to any common carrier or contract carrier in respect to a wool product shipped or delivered for shipment in commerce in the ordinary course of business."

We respectfully suggest that in the event your committee should desire to report H. R. 6736, the following sentence should be added:

"This shall not apply to any common carrier or contract carrier in respect to machinery shipped in commerce in the ordinary course of business."

Well, now, I do not see-and I am directing this to the gentleman from Arkansas-how we could call upon the carriers to try to find out whether the parts to a machine of this sort were going to be destined for a gambling machine or a vending machine. You just simply could not lay that on the carriers, certainly.

And then comes the question of enforcement. If the carrier is exempted from the enforcement, and I think that he should be, then who is going to enforce the law in respect to the interstate shipment? How are you going to find out? It seems to me that it is a case of having a lot of investigators around to watch people open packages. I do not understand how it can be worked, and at the same time do justice and fairness to the carriers themselves.

Mr. HARRIS. That does point up the very same problem that I have been trying to draw out here and call to the attention of the members of the committee, the very delicate problem that you have to deal with in this whole subject matter. That is the reason I say that it is not simply in saying that we want to get rid of something that everybody recognizes to be a bad situation, and I think is a deplorable condition throughout the country. The local officers do not feel that they can cope with the situation. Far be it from me to criticize any people of any locality, community, or State, to not use their own good judgment in electing the type of officials that they want. I do call attention to a situation that can really create a very serious problem with the carriers, the businessmen, the manufacturers, and so forth, and in fact you can take-and I will say this, as I recognize from my experience with people who set up these coin machines and. all kinds of devices-they can make more of them than you can possibly get after as a law-enforcing officer, and you will see a new one come out every few days. They will take a slot that you can use to obtain a bottle of milk, and the first thing you know they have got a gambling device set up with it. They are pretty smart people when it comes to creating these devices that can be used in this manner.