Record
Hearing
1950-10-17
U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, printed hearings, Part 5: Illinois, via Internet Archive
Kefauver Part 5: Exhibit 35, statement on slot machines and a horse book at the Seven Gables, Morris, Illinois (17 October 1950)
A statement taken by an Illinois assistant attorney general after a State police raid and put to the tavern's licensee at the Chicago hearing: "We take in about $1,200 per month from seven slot machines," and the horse book "grossed in 1949 $200,000."
- Date
- 1950-10-17
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Rights
- A hearing print of the United States Senate, published by the Government Printing Office. A work of the United States Congress, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The scan is the Internet Archive copy of the Boston Public Library's printed volume.
At the Chicago hearing of 17 October 1950 the committee questioned the licensee of the Seven Gables tavern at Morris, Illinois, about a written statement printed as Exhibit 35 (testimony at Part 5, pp. 517-524; the exhibit at appendix pp. 1383-1384). He said the place was raided by the State police “on the 26th day of May.” The exhibit’s closing note says the statement, three pencilled pages, was taken at the Seven Gables by an Illinois assistant attorney general from Springfield “immediately after the State police raid,” and that the owner signed it and initialled each page.
The statement says slot machines had been operated in the barroom since 1936, off and on, and that “We take in about $1,200 per month from seven slot machines.” It says “The partnership owns the machines and no outsiders are interested in the slots,” that the partnership repaired machines in a rear room and leased others to taverns and filling stations near Morris on “a percentage basis of 50-50,” and that a horse book in the back room “grossed in 1949 $200,000 per our records,” with a crap game and a roulette wheel besides.
At the hearing the witness said of the document: “The fellow asked me a lot of things and wrote this down himself.” The OCR prints the number of machines in the repair room and the date of the statement in garbled digits; neither is relied on. The names of employees and of the businesses that leased machines are not copied.
