GONE TO RENO

Southland Times, Issue 21431, 27 June 1931, Page 11

GONE TO RENO

DIVOHCE MADE EASY

(By

Susan Lee.)

I notice that a prominent English musical comedy actress, who also happens to be of good family, has crossed to Reno to divorce her titled husband, and also announces that she will become an American citizen if her divorce is not fully recognized in England. Which brings me to the thought that in this period of world depression, Reno is probably suffering less than any other part of the world. Although mining may not be as active as it. was, and cattle and the big railroad shops may be feeling the pinch, commerce in Reno is still reported as very brisk, and after dark this little city is said to have a livelier night life than many communities ten times its size. By a recent act of the Legislature gambling has been put on a legal basis, and is in full swing.

This state of affairs in Reno is attributed to the fourth great industry of the city—the divorce colony. Because of its lenient residence requirement, its liberal “grounds” and the absolute character of the Nevada decrees, Reno has seen between 2,000 and 3,000 divorces granted to outsiders at Washoe County’s famous courthouse each year. It estimates conservatively that for each divorce about £2OO is spent in the city. The total of about £600,000 poured by the divorce colony into the community yearly is a large amount of money for a town of 25,000 residents. In hard times it must mean all the difference between feeling the depression harshly and scarcely feeling it at all. For the quick-divorce demand Is little, if at all, affected by the ordinary, or even the cataclysmic, ups and downs of business conditions. Prudent couples in love may defer matrimony until times look up; but when people want divorces in a hurry they set out to get them whatever the trend of the financial chart, it seems. This theory that a divorce colony’s contributions to the community purse are balm for financial distress is the cause of present interstate competition in rapid divorce mills. Arkansas, hard presser! by drought, and Idaho, afflicted with the same evils of cattle and mining depression that should be worrying its neighbour, Nevada, have heard that Reno is somehow not as aware of hard times as most communities. In consequence the law which established Reno as the centre of America’s quick divorce industry has, since March 1, acquired two rivals, while legislative projects for more competi tion have been seriously proposed in Oklahoma and Arizona. Nevada, caring not to risk the loss of her divorce revenues, has replied with an act reducing her residence requirement from three months to six weeks. And to make certain that Nevada’s inducements to divorce candidates will remain superior to those of her competitors, there are other bills pending in the Legislature, it is said, which will authorize secretdivorce proceedings at the discretion of judges, permitting petitioners in uncontested cases to omit specific descriptions of the grounds for their suits. If the rebuilt divorce mill goes into full operation, then, it will be possible for a would-be divorcee to arrive in Reno, file a suit charging nothing more than “mental cruelty,” have the cau.se heard in secret session, get a final decree, remarry' under Nevada’s liberal'marriage laws, and depart before luncheon on the forty-third day of the sojourn. It was purely an accident that Reno became the divorce “capital.” Early in her sixty-seven years of Statehood, Nevada was faced with the problem of retaining some of the transients who came and went with the ups and downs of her mining camps. One device adopted was a law conferring citizenship on all qualified strangers after six months of residence. Its divorce law, copied from the codes of numerous other ‘liberal minded” States, prescribed that desertion, non-support and cruelty were sufficient grounds for the legal dissolution of marriage. And, in the case of an uncontested suit, there was nothing to prevent the award of an absolute divorce and immediate remarriage. Gradually lawyers in States with more severe divorce codes learned that the combination of Nevada residence and divorce laws offered a convenience to clients who wished to be divorced in what, thirty years ago, was “a hurry.” In the beginning the “immigrants” were people of wealth and position. Almost without realizing the significance of the fact, the town found itself harbouring a divorce colony of socially notable personages. It followed naturally that means had to be devised for entertaining these visitors. Hence dancehalls and gambling houses did a flourishing business. The city soon reached the conclusion that drinking and gaming facilities were its best secondary means of holding the divorce trade. Nevada has come to be exploited as a haven of old-fashioned unrestraint. To meet the easy-divorce competition of Paris and Mexico, Nevada cut her residence requirement from six to three months. Gambling with mechanical devices as well as with games of cards and skill, has become legalized. At night, expensive cars dash along the highways to Reno’s leading road-houses, where a costly liquor service, more suave gambling, and the “thump, thump of jazz orchestras” go on all night. In the week-ends, especially in the Spring, there is a gaudy exodus of modish garments, resplendent cars and obvious bankrolls to the mountain resort of Calneva, forty 'miles away. There, sophisticates in western diversions say, is the “nearest thing to an American Monte Carlo to be found outside of Florida.”

Perhaps I have explained why there is something distinctly. cheapening and antiBritish in an Englishwoman’s going to this place. Of course she is not the first; but that does not alter the cheapness.