The industrial revolution
of the late 1700s and early 1800s saw machines displace
man in the manufacturing of just about everything,
except perhaps other human beings (but that’s
happening now!). In 1811 in England, organized retaliatory
groups of angry workers, both those who were employed
and those who were unemployed, known as Luddites,
went around smashing machines and decrying the fact
that man was being replaced by soulless, heartless,
inhuman, almost satanic devices. The jobs those
workers performed are long gone, as are those workers.
The machines that took their place, that outperformed
them, have birthed a world that looks to machines
not only to do physical labor but to answer some
of the most profound questions of science.
Apocryphally,
the slot revolution of the 1970s in America saw one
poor worker who had just been let go at the Landmark
in Las Vegas take a sledge hammer to a machine on the
casino floor and scream: “You son of a bitch! You’re
gonna kill all of us!” From our source (one of
the most unreliable sources we have unfortunately),
this dealer, or rather former dealer, got in two hefty
whacks with the sledge hammer before he was carted off
shrieking and
foaming to Clark County
jail. This poor dealer was worried that the machines
were taking over the casino industry and indeed
he was right. Today, fully two-thirds of the casinos’
profits are from the machines and in some areas
of the country such as Tunica close to 90 percent
of the hold is from the pulling of handles and the
pressing of buttons.
Although human dealers
have not as yet been replaced by machines (in fact
there are more dealers today than ever before because
of the explosion of casinos across America), the
percentage of live gaming employees who deal directly
with the games in the casinos has decreased in direct
proportion to the increase in the number, scope
and variety of machines. This change has even hit,
well, the making of change. Thus, the women and
men who cash bills for coin (the “change persons”)
are being phased out by slot and video-poker machines
that accept bills and make their own change. It
makes you wonder if some casino Luddites might just
be stockpiling sledge hammers.
And what has caused such consternation among the
human casino workers? Why the very things which
have lured more people into casinos than to live
athletic events in the past decade -- those incredibly
smart, incredibly charming, incredibly winning computer-driven
slot machines.
The Luddites are dead
and buried. Their factories are now places where
men service machines who do the yeoman’s share
of the work and create the royal share of the profit.
So too in casinos. Slots are king. They are the
mother-load of gold for the casinos. Even a superficial
examination of the casino landscape will show this.
For every billboard that extols a given table game
or table-game option in the casinos, there are probably
ten or more that extol the wonder of the machines.
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Columns By Franki Scoblete
