A DIVORCE COLONY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9317, 18 August 1908, Page 2

A DIVORCE COLONY.

♦- . DEALING WITH 'MATRIMONIAL MISFITS." Amongst the ". health resorts" which arc now zealously advertising their claims to patronage. I see (writes the .New York correspondent of the " Daily Telegraph ") that Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is prominent. Sioux Falls maintains one of the strangest industries in the world, -where' a colony, averaging annually about five hundred, seeks release from marital difficulties. Sioux Falls is appropriately described as "the great surgery for the cure of matrimonial appendicitis." Since January, 1907. Sioux Falls 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. MATRIMONIAL 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, quickly 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 philosophical souk with money and enterprise, who6o big motor-, cars dash up and down the main thor-' oughfares of the city, and give an element of social life to the place, predominate. The town caters for all, poor and rich. It is an elastic colony, with big villas at extravagant rents, and boarding-houses where you can live 'for tho ninety days at 20tes 'weekly. Competition amongst local divorce lawyers is keen. If you don't get a bargain rate from one firm, it is quite usual to consult another, and in. this way THE COST' OF DIVORCE is occasionally reduced from £2000 to £30. But there is no trade union scale of prices, and some will get a divorce for £5. It is impressed on people who' desire to reside at Sioux Falls for judicial purposes. that they need not really stay there all the time, so long as lodgings are retained, and that there is a minimum of publicity given to their suit. Sioux Falls, with its divorce colony as an important asset, would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs if it wflre to report evidence in cases, and even the local newspapers pay little at~ tention to the divorce business, except in special eases. This business has gone on for twenty years. At present the divorce mills, as they are called., are under a shadow because of a legislative proposal to compel aspirants to iratrimonial freedom to reeiide a full year instead of ninety days. American opinion generally denounces South Dakota divorces, and requests that the State shall revise its laws in harmony with other States of the Union, which are just as strict as in England.