Novelty Suit

A profitable, privately-owned $10,000,000 corporation is Chicago's Mills Novelty Co., world's biggest maker of slot machines. Owned and managed by four Brothers Mills, who are not to be confused with the Four Mills Brothers of Radio, the company has no connection with the $150,000,000 slot machine racket except that it makes the machines. So far as the Brothers Mills know, their notorious product is simply used as a "trade stimulator" or for amusement. Indeed, many a slot machine goes into the mansions of fun-loving financiers. Mills insists that there are several slot machines in Buckingham Palace, and the company has turned out special jobs using $5 gold pieces for a rich Chinese gentleman in Singapore. The Prince of Nepal has slot machines in all of his bathrooms.

Coin gambling machines account for less than one-third of the Mills slot business. They make pin games; ordinary vending machines for gum. candy and cigarets; automatic phonographs that play one record for 5''. popular in post-Repeal "taverns" and "grills.'' Only significant non-slot Mills product is a counter ice cream freezer selling from $1,000 up.

Something of a nightmare to the big dairy companies, counter freezers do not dispense individual portions for a dime but they are supposed to permit a druggist to make his own ice cream at a considerable saving. No mixing is done in the store; the prepared "mix"' is bought from dairy companies. The dairy companies much prefer to sell not ''mix" but ice cream, in which the profit is bigger.

Mills has sold only about 1,000 counter mixers in the past five years. Last week it put its reasons for that slow progress into a suit against the International Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers, National Dairy, Borden's, Beatrice Creamery and some 75 other U. S. ice cream makers, charging conspiracy in restraint of trade. Mills asked triple and special punitive damages amounting to $46,929,995.12.

No strike suit was Mills Novelty Co. v. National Dairy Products Corp. et al. It was based largely on a complaint entered last March by the Federal Trade Commission, which has spent two years, encouraged by the Brothers Mills, collecting 33,000 pages of scandalous evidence against the ice cream makers. Some methods used to discourage purchase of counter freezers, according to the FTC, were:

Circulating letters fraudulently secured from dissatisfied users; boycotting distributors; shutting off the supply of "mix"; offering to purchase used counter freezers from druggists at exorbitant prices; threatening to set up rival drugstores if a counter freezer was installed; sponsoring legislation and ordinances drawn to penalize users; persuading sanitary inspectors to harass stores where freezers were employed.

Not surprising was the desire of the Brothers Mills to do battle with almost the entire U. S. dairy industry. Their ideas of corporate management are as novel as their products. Brother Fred, 40, is president; Ralph, 37, vice president in charge of sales; Herbert, 35, treasurer and manager of the 19-acre plant; Hayden ("Bill"), 33, secretary. They keep their employes happy with beauty contests and sweepstakes on monthly sales. Last summer Brother Fred ordered beer served to every employe every day of the week. Even the office boys call him by his first name, sometimes pursuing him down a corridor yelling: "Hey, Fred. I've got an idea." He reciprocates the familiarity with practical jokes like clipping the corners from paper cups at water coolers. The Brothers Mills say they cannot remember any time when their company lost money.

All four robustious Mills brothers live in staid, suburban Oak Park, where they were raised. Their father who founded the company in 1889 had the distinction of having once cornered the Spanish peanut market and annoyed his less hearty neighbors by keeping a herd of cows on his broad lawns. In winter the Brothers Mills dispatch their jointly-owned yacht Minoco (after their company; to Florida where they continue their fun-making while fishing. Once they made a composite photograph, showing the heads of the four brothers on bodies of more fortunate fishermen (see cut p. 64).

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