A woman in a flowered dress plays a slot machine mounted on a post in a white-walled room while a man in a straw hat, two other men and two barefoot boys watch — Open the full imageJPG, 640 × 452 px, 0.0 MB

People watching slot machine being played, Pilottown, Louisiana (1938)

Farm Security Administration photograph by Russell Lee of onlookers around a slot machine at Pilottown, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, September 1938.

Date: 1938
Kind: photograph
Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: The Library of Congress item record states: "No known restrictions." Collection: Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, a federal collection. Call number LC-USF33-011796-M4; digital ID LC-DIG-fsa-8a24366.

The Library of Congress title is “People watching slot machine being played, Pilottown, Louisiana.” Russell Lee made the photograph for the Farm Security Administration in September 1938. A woman plays a machine mounted at shoulder height on a wooden post while men and boys look on. The caption names no one, and it does not say who owned the machine.

The photograph is filed as a view of slot machines in rural Louisiana in the 1930s. No record ties it to any operator. The copy stored here is the Library’s medium-size JPEG.

itemCouple playing slot machine, Raceland, Louisiana (1938)Farm Security Administration photograph by Russell Lee of two people at a slot machine in a barroom at Raceland, Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, in the autumn of 1938.

itemGirl playing slot machine in decorated barroom, Raceland, Louisiana (1938)Farm Security Administration photograph by Russell Lee, captioned as a girl playing a slot machine in a decorated barroom at Raceland, Louisiana, September 1938.itemKefauver Part 7: Frank Costello on the Louisiana Mint Co. and slot machines (New York, 13 March 1951), pp. 915-927Asked what the Louisiana Mint Co. was, Costello answered "It was a mint machine, known as a slot machine," and agreed with counsel that Governor Huey Long had asked him to go into the slot-machine business in New Orleans.