"One Sound State"

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The first white man to enter Nevada passed on through. That was in 1775. Most important people who have entered Nevada in the 162 intervening years have also passed on through. Last week in Carson City, smallest of State capitals (population 1,596), Nevada's Assembly seconded its Senate in a resolution designed to attract more substantial people to Nevada more permanently.

The joint resolution called for repeal of that portion of Nevada's Constitution which prohibits lotteries. When young Assemblyman J. E. Sweatt of Washoe County arose to argue against it, the measure's friends called him a "long beard." When he returned to the attack wearing false whiskers (see cut), they silenced him by voting to have any legislator with a beard of more than six inches taken out by the sergeant-at-arms and shaved.

Because Nevada, in amending its Constitution, observes an "ample interval of deliberation" as urged by Theodore Roosevelt, and requires passage by both houses during two successive sessions of the Legislature (it meets in odd-numbered years), and then submission to popular referendum, Nevada's lottery project was not imminent last week. By 1939, when Nevadans may vote on it, present public opinion may have changed.

But behind last week's horseplay was a perfectly serious and, for the U. S., unique project sponsored by Senator William Marsh of Tonopah and Assemblyman Pat Cline of Las Vegas. If Nevada's Constitution is amended, they will introduce legislation to create a state lottery monopoly, to produce a million dollars a month for division between the State and lucky ticket holders. The State's share will, its sponsors promise, permit abolition of all State taxes.

State lotteries have before now been proposed in such august U. S. Legislatures as the General Court of Massachusetts, and died aborning. But Nevada is not Massachusetts. Nevada is a thinly populated State where easy divorce, open prostitution, licensed gambling and legalized cockfighting are only the more luridly publicized manifestations of a free & easy, individualist spirit deriving straight from the mining camp and cattle ranch. Realism is lent to the prospect of a tax-canceling State Lottery by the fact that Nevada has already launched an arresting promotion campaign calling attention to itself as "One Sound State" which has:

A balanced budget.

No corporation tax.

No income tax.

No inheritance tax.

No tax on gifts.

No tax on intangibles.

The greatest per capita wealth ($5,985).

Last year, when the New Deal's appeal to "the underprivileged" was at its most ominous for people of "entrenched wealth," the First National Bank in Reno and the Nevada State Journal set out to promote Nevada as a sort of financial cyclone cellar. To a pedigreed list of 10,000 prospects they sent out a booklet in which the bank's former president, Governor Richard Kirman Sr.* presented to people of wealth sound fiscal reasons why they should become Nevada residents. Attorney General Gray Mashburn explained the simple legal steps required. And the booklet emphasized that "Nevada has no radical organization in its entire 110,000 square miles. There is no political movement of even slightly pinkish tinge. . . . The law-makers are cattlemen, miners, lawyers, business and professional men and there hasn't been the slightest whisper of radicalism from one of them."

By last week, Nevada could claim about 500 prosperous "immigrants" to its tax-free Utopia. Aside from such wealthy men as Errett Cord, Caleb Bragg, Sam Harris and John J. Raskob, who became interested in Nevada mining before and during Inflation, the list of permanent newcomers included Major Max C. Fleischmann, director of Standard Brands, famed Santa Barbara sportsman; Lewis Luckenbach (steamships); Arthur K. Bourne (Singer sewing machines); the fourth Earl of Cowley, Christian Arthur Wellesley, who came for a divorce, stayed to marry and settle down with his favorite nightclub hat-check girl. When William Randolph Hearst threatened to move away from California's taxes, Reno wired him an invitation, as yet unsuccessful.

Of its climate Nevada cannot boast--hot & dry in summer; so snowy cold in winter that even the Governor gets out and shovels (see cut). And to its quick divorces it may soon have stiff competition: last week the Texas Legislature was considering an "emergency" bill to permit divorces after six weeks' residence. For Nevada's boosters, their State's chief asset, after low taxes, is its virginity. After they have talked about its transcontinental rail, plane and bus services; its cheap power from Boulder Dam; its natural resources of gold, silver, copper, zinc and lead, from comparatively old Virginia City, Mountain City, Goldfield and the scattered "ghost towns," to the great open pit mines at Ely and such recent strikes as Jumbo in the northwest; its sheep and cattle; its agricultural industries (alfalfa, turkeys, cantaloupes) in the Fallen irrigation district; its abundant game--deer, antelope, bighorn sheep, duck, pheasant, sage hen, quail and myriad trout--there is little for them to say except that Nevada is so undeveloped that it is one place a man can still go and pioneer. Nevada still has railroads (the Battle Mountain to Austin, for example) powered by automobile engines. Tonopah's sewer system is privately owned.

* Aged 60, Virginia City-born, Governor Kirman signs himself "Sr." in deference to his 37-year-old son.

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