DAKOTA DIVORCE MILLS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13691, 5 September 1908, Page 3

DAKOTA DIVORCE MILLS.

Among the "health resorts" which are now zealously advertufing ijheir claims to patronage I see (*ays a correspondent) that Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is particularly prominent. Sioux Falls does not hilongto the category of derelict vegetarian colonic* in whetse behalf publicity is invoked so at>- to counteract the hard times, bub maintain* one of the strangest industries in the world, where a colony, averaging annually about five hundred, teeks release from marital difficulties. Sioux 'Falls is appropriately dt&cribed a» "the great eurgery for the cure of matrimonial appendicitis." Since January, 1907 Sious Fal.s has granted 200 divorces of the kind which recently exasperated one of your English judges, who spoke of them in terms which were reproduced approvingly in the American newspapers. Matrimony misfits can reside at the Falls for ninety days, " barely more than a summer outing," and at the end of that period can secure freedom, easily, and surely," to quote a typical advertisement of local divorce lawyers.

Not. many of the couples who colonise the Falls are "orphans of the heart." Cheerful and pbi.cbopbical souls with money and enterprise, whose big motorcaib daish up and down the main thorough fares ut the;,city and give an element of .Mjciai life to.the place, predominate. Tlie town caters for all, poor and rich. It is an elastic colony, with big villas at cxtravagaait rents, and boarding-houses where you can live ninety days at 20s weekly. Competition amongst local divorce lawyei& is keen. If you don't get a bargain rate from one farm, it *> quite it&ual to consult another, and in this way the cost of divorce is occasionally reduced frcm £2OOO to £3O. But there is no trade union scale of prices, and ."Mime will get a decree for £5.

It is impressed on people who desire to leside at Sioux Fallo tor judical purpets ts that they need not Ktay there all the time, so long as lodgings arc retained, and that there h> a minimum of publicity given to thJrsuit. Sioux Falls, with it* divorce colony as an important asset, would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg of it were to report evidence in cants. and even the heal ucwspapcis pay little attention to divorce brt>iuess. except in •special cases. The business has gone on for twenty years. At present the divorce mills, as they are called are under a iihadow, because of a legislative proposal to ci<tii|K-l aspirants to matrimonial freedom to reside a full year instead of nine ty days. American opinion generally deSouth Dakota divorce**, and request* tbat the State shall rev&e its laws >n harmony with other States if the l"n ion, which are just its ttriet u» in Kngland.