Pindemonium

The pin-game industry is a $10,000,000 group of enterprises responsible for some 500 dingy "sportlands" in which an estimated 500,000 U. S. devotees of bagatelle gather every week to piddle away their time. It is responsible also for some 250,000 bagatelle boards, operated by a nickel-in-the-slot, situated in bars, hotel lobbies, lunchrooms and cigar stores throughout the U. S. Last week, bigwigs of the pin-game industry had the most exciting week they have experienced since, for mysterious reasons connected with Depression, nervous introspection and an appetite for echolalia, the modern brand of bagatelle, played on a glass-enclosed pin-studded board with glass or metal balls, became a national craze in 1933.

Ban, A certain vague opprobrium is attached to all 5-c- games played indoors by seedy sportsmen. That the pin-game has been able to evade the consequences of this is due to the fact that it is not essentially a form of gambling. Whenever he indulges in it, a pin-game player is sure to lose a nickel. Last year, however, when the novelty of plain pin-games began to wear off, shrewd operators devised the idea of rewarding high scores with prizes. "Sportlands" (of which there were soon 60 in New York) are pin-game parlors which give to their customers coupons commensurate with their scores. Coupons can be exchanged for prizes ranging from teacups to $25 radios. Last month District Attorney Samuel John Foley of The Bronx obtained the conviction of a sport-land proprietor for maintaining a gambling establishment, had him fined $25. Encouraged by the decision, New York's Mayor LaGuardia last week announced that all 60 of the city's sportlands would be promptly closed. Pin-game players got three days in which to cash their coupons.

Tsar. To bigwigs in the pin-game industry, official antagonism is nothing new. For the past year, pin-game operators all over the U. S. have been intermittently assailed by the authorities. Since many of them got into the industry from the peep-show or slot-machine fields, they are at no loss to discover means of dealing with such situations. Last week, frightened by District Attorney Foley's attack, pin-game entrepreneurs had the foresight, even before Mayor LaGuardia's ban went into effect, of trying a completely new expedient: election of a "Tsar," like baseball's Landis and cinema's Hays, to tell them what kind of pin-game operation is legal, to intercede with authorities on their behalf when necessary, to help prevent "racketeers" from gaining control of the industry. For Pin Tsar, the Amalgamated Operators' Association, the Greater New York Operators' Association, the Metropolitan Jobbers' Association and the Skill Games Board of Trade chose no less a personage than Major General John F. O'Ryan, onetime (1934) Police Commissioner of New York, to help solve their intricate, if Lilliputian, problems. General O'Ryan refused the post.

Convention. While New York's bagatelle bigwigs were on pins & needles last week, thousands of pin-game manufacturers, distributors and operators from all corners of the world were busy gathering for their annual convention at Chicago's Sherman Hotel. On display were 50 new varieties of bagatelle boards including one to resemble a map of Ethiopia with Haile Selassie's palace az high-score hole. To his confreres, Clinton S. Darling, secretary of the National Association of Coin Operated Machine Manufacturers, expressed his confidence in a pastime which has already lasted twice as long as midget golf: "The industry has supported many thousands of factory workers in making these games and in allied industries. . . . We believe that this industry will go on in spite of temporary handicaps such as the situation now existing in New York."

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