THE PENNY-IN-THE-SLOT HABIT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 38, 27 January 1912, Page 2

THE PENNY-IN-THE-SLOT HABIT.

In tins part of tlie world, where ponny-in-the-slot machines are few, people have no idea of the dimensions to which tins method of buying and selling lias grown in England and Europe. . At the last annual meeting of the British Automatic Company it was stated that in twelve years 488,000,00,0 packages had been sold through the company’s penny-in-thc slot machines. The Londoner travelling by “tube” need not bother the booking clerk, for a penny dropped in the slot will give him his ticket. Tf ho wants his boots cleaned, he • can got it done by an automatic cleaner. The machines are intelligent, and even moral. One established some years ago to provide refreshment, rejected French pennies, and returned two-shilling pieces put in by mistake. On the Continent the habit has. even a stronger grip on people than it has in England. In Berlin when a train reaches the rail way station and the passenger finds it raining outside, two shillings and a penny dropped in a machine brings him an umbrella, on which he gets Is 8d back if it is returned within two days. If a lady finds herself in a disarray at the end of a journey, a penny-in-the-slot machine provides her with rouge, powder, eyebrow pencil, and lip salvo. In Paris >t is possible to obtain a seven-course dinner, with wines, from machines. The quaintest idea wo have heard of ip this connection is in operation in a village of Saxony. The electric lights in the street's are put out at eleven, but if a late-goer docs not care for the dark, he can illuminate half the village by dropping a penny into a box at the foot of one of the standards. Enormous quantities are used in slot gas motors in the Old Country. In some parts the meters are utilised by thrifty people as money-boxes. They rely on the gas company’s collectors to return them the excess coins when they visit the meter, and apparently this is done. In Wigan one year’s harvest of excess coins from gas meters yielded five sovereigns, four halfcrowns, 405 florins, 502 shillings, 134 sixpences, 250 threepences, and 384 lhalf-pennies. ( \. . -