Evening post. SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1931. A "WIDE OPEN" STATE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 114, 16 May 1931, Page 12

Evening post. SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1931. A "WIDE OPEN" STATE

Though ihc 130 lawyers of Reno are estimated to have averaged 500 dollars per. client out of the 2000 divorce cases filed last year, and the legal-queue which began to form outside the County Clerk's office at 6 a.m. on the Ist May showed that the Six-week Divorce Act which came into force on that day was going to boom the business tremendously, the passage of this great measure of emancipation by the Nevada Legislature was not without its anxieties for the profession. If the divorce business had been worth 1,000,000 dollars to the profession last year, it was estimated that the 600 divorce seekers in constant residence might |be worth 2,000,000 dollars more to the town. The 130 lawyers and the 12,000 citizens were therefore at one in bringing pressure upon the Legislature to' pass the Bill, but a jarring note was sounded in the suggestion that the' lawyers were making too much out of the business, and that in these days of competition one of the great industries of Nevada was thereby unduly hampered. After the principal measure had received a favourable report from the Public Morals Committee —it is delightful to know that Nevada has such a committee and that its moral sense was not shocked by the six-weeks' residence proposal—this fear found expression in a Bill introduced, by Speaker D. ,H, Tandy which fixed the maximum jfee to be charged by attorneys in I undefended divorce "cases at 35 dollars for each party. ■ • t

' As this amending Bill evidently' did hot pass, the lawyers of Reno will still be'able to make a living, but the admirable intentions of its author are worth recording.

.The Bill,, said, the Carson City cor-' respondent, of the Associated Press, carries a Iqng preamble which recites the benefit of the Nevada divorce laws to the matrimonial ills of the nation, and declares that passage of a three-months' divorce law by Arkansas threatens to wipe out the Nevada industry, unless Nevada attorneys reduce their fees Kb a point- where divorces will not only be. easy to\,get, but very cheap.

This combination of disinterested desire to minister to the matrimonial troubles of the nation with a determination that the profits of the work should be monopolised by Nevada is beyond all praise. But if the passing of the principal measure did not excite the popular jubilation that it deserved, the cause was not to be found in. any conflict over the issues raised by this amending Bill, but in the fact that it was overshadowed by what was generally regarded as a still more glorious triumph of freedom. Reno, along with the rest of Nevada, wrote the correspondent of the, Associated Press on the 20th March, -went "Old West" to-day. In the flush of wide-open gambling the new 42-day divorce law was virtually forgotten. At 10 o'clock in the morning the principal gangling hall in the ■ city was thronged by hundreds who played or milled about the roulette wheels, faro tables,- mechanical dice throwing, and other gambling games. The hum'and hubbub of gambling, the elieky-click of machines, and the clatter of poker chips was partly drowned by the staccato noise of a compressed air-drill operated by a construction, crew engaged in cutting through massive stone, brick and mortar walls to enlarge the gaming room. ' On the 19th March the Governor of Nevada had signed both the Sixweeks Divorce Bill and a Licensed Gambling Bill, and while the operation of the former was postponed for six weeks in order not to shorten the residence of those who were qualifying .under the three-month "law, there was no reason for postponing the operation of the Bill for authorising gambling with no restriction except a licence fee of 50 dollars per table per month. If a third measure might seem to have been needed for the complete emancipation of the Stale, the Prohibition Administrator, Mr. W. G. Walker,'' supplies , the answer. Nevada's about as wot as it can bo now, he said. With no. State liquor law and a wet sentiment prevailing, there isn't much'that can be done. For an analogous reason the revolution .effected by the licensing of gambling is not quite so revolutionary as it sounds. The State had not previously suffered under a straitlaced servitude in this matter any more than in the other. The headline, "Nevada Gaming Lid Blown Off by Governor," stated the effect of his signing the Bill fairly enough. The lid had been put on by a law passed in October, 1910, but much had been going on under the lid, and in characteristic American fashion winking' at violations of the law had been as profitable for. the authorities as it was comfortable for all parties. Asked his opinion of the new law, the Mayor of Reno said:

I don't think it will increase revenue much. This city had.'been deriving about 35,000 dollars a; year from card games. Of course, it wasn't lawful to gamble for high stakes. We just assessed them so much per table for playing cards. We never asked them what kind of games they were playing—just took their word for it, that the games were within the law.

Yet, even in Nevada, the law counts for something. On the day when the Gambling Bill was signed, the "San Francisco Chronicle's" special correspondent telegraphed from Reno as follows:—

.When licensed gambling was closed

by Statute in 1910, Reno had four large establishments and half a dozen smaller ones. The bigger ones .ran full tilt night and day, and their swinging doors, were never closed. It was literally true that none of them had any keys. They nevor used them. Members of the sporting fraternity say the community will support fully as many games now, and perhaps more. , The expectations of ihesc'spoilsmen seem likely to be realised. The more modest expectation of the correspondent himself that apparently gambling is to become one of tho "large.scale" industries of Eeno and similar cities was put beyond a doubt by the operations of the opening day as already partly described. More than thirty professional dealers were estimated to have come inLo Reno in honour of the event, and more were expected. Roulette wheels which had been operating outside the city haunts were being brought into town. The largest gambling resort in Reno was. on the first night, ''crowded to capacity !\vith a cosmopolitan mass of humanity." Throughout the night, reported the Associated Press correspondent, there was in progress in a single down-town establishment three faro games, 'three "21 games, two crap games, and a well patronised "chuckaluck". table. . As the nocturnal1 players dwindled others took their places. All of the principal establishments operate twentyfour hours a day. . . Dealers and croupiers wearing gr6en eyeshades work in eight-hour shifts tossing about or raking in small fortunes during a shift. And the operations of the second day, which Vas^a Saturday, were of course extended into, and probably over, Sunday. The comments of the Mayor of Reno, Mr. E. E. Roberts, as he watched the play in one of these places," we're charming. During the eight years of his benign administration Reno had not been exactly a Puritan town, but now he was proud to see it "wide open." As a lawyer, Mr. Roberts is said to have won more than 2000 divorce suits, and only lost one, and to have quite a satisfactory explanation of this single blot on his record. My client lied to me. The chump didn't tell .me he had another wife living, and I didn't find it out until -she showed up in Court as a witness. In regard to what has hitherto been Reno's principal industry Mr. Roberts may as ''a divorce lawyer be suspected of bias, but as Mayor, moralist, and philosopher he delivers a strictly impartial opinion on the industry which may soon claim the first place, as follows:—', It's all nonsense trying to regulate people's morals by Maw. For eight years I've been trying to make.Reno a place where everybody can do what they please—just so they don't interfere with other people's rights. . . Guess Nevada is about the only fr.ee State left, seems-funny people will lot a lot of long-haired reformers take their liberties away from them. . . But the boys have got to run these games on the square. Eighty-five years ago Russell deplored in the first of ''The Biglow Papers" the defection of his own Slate from the cause of freedom. Massachusetts, God' forgive her, She's akneelin' with the rest, She, thet ough' to lia' clung for ever In her grand oldfcagle-nost; She thet ough' to /stand so fearless Wile tho wracks are round her hurled, Holdin' up a beacon peerless To the oppressed of all the worldl Massachusetts unfortunately continues to kneel,, and so do most of the other States 'of the Union, but there is one State in the Far West where the American .eagle can still make a nest. 'Way back among the snowy peaks and the breezy plateaus of Nevada, her wide open spaces and her wide open towns, her divorce Courts putting cases. through at the rate of 200 a day, and her gambling saloons working for24'hours a day and seven days a week, the traveller may still find the ideals of Washington and Lincoln faithfully preserved, and he may hear them admirably expoundrd by the Mayor of her principal city.