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145 7 The Risk in Using Gambling to Create “america’s Playground” Las Vegas, 1905–60 l a r r y g r a g g In her book The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture, Gerda Reith argues that gambling, “while still retaining some moral ambiguity , has shed its pariah status and become fully incorporated into western capitalist economies as just another type of commercial enterprise.” Noting gambling’s rapid proliferation “throughout Europe, the americas, australasia , africa, the former east European communist bloc and the developing countries of south East asia,” she concludes, “Chance has been commodified as the ultimate twenty-first century product, sold by business and purchased by the consumer—the gambler.”1 While the twenty-first century clearly has embraced gambling into its leisure culture, in the first half of the twentieth century it was not clear if it could become a legitimate enterprise in the United states. In 1931, amid the Great Depression, the state of Nevada pioneered the effort to make gambling legal by approving virtually all games of chance— “wide open gambling.” Three decades later, the Nevada State Journal published a seven-part series titled “100 Year History of Nevada Gaming.” In the last installment James Hulse, one of the series’ authors, wrote, “Nevada is in the strange position of having sanctioned a form of conduct which is generally regarded as unrespectable or even evil elsewhere in america, of having given it respectability, and of having gotten used to drawing a substantial part of its economic nourishment from it.” Complicating the state’s unique growing dependence on gambling was the simultaneous “effort by the organized underworld nationwide to increase its wealth and power, at least partly by the proceeds of gambling.”2 Las Vegas had become particularly dependent on gambling for its economic health by 1960. For nearly three decades the residents had seen their city grow rapidly because of a tourist-based economy built on the allure of gambling. The risk in relying on such an industry , particularly in the 1950s, lay in the threat of the federal government to limit or even eliminate wide-open gambling because of the influence of 146 | G A M B L I N G , S PA C E , A N D T I M E organized crime in hotels and casinos. The future of Las Vegas depended on its ability to minimize that risk by regulating gambling effectively and by creating a positive image of the city, one that would counter the perception that hoodlums ruled. Wide-Open Gambling Gambling has been an intrinsic part of life in Nevada from its territorial days. although James Nye, the territorial governor, gained a prohibition of games of chance in 1861, eight years later the state legislature overrode Governor Henry Blasdel’s veto of a bill legalizing gambling. For the next forty years, despite various efforts of crusading legislators, gambling remained essentially wide open in Nevada.3 The same was true of Las Vegas from its founding in 1905. Within a year there were, according to one contemporary, more saloons than any other types of businesses combined.4 The arizona Club, the Red Onion, the Gem, the Favorite, the Turf, and the star among others offered , besides liquor, a variety of games of chance: roulette, craps, faro, blackjack , poker, and slot machines. Quickly, Las Vegas, a division point on the san Pedro, Los angeles, and salt Lake Railroad, developed a reputation as a stop with lively gambling clubs, particularly the stylish arizona Club with its mahogany columns, leaded bevel glass, and marble baseboards, illustrated in figure 7.1.5 This rapid commercial development reflected an important reality for Las Vegas and Nevada at the time. as the Las Vegas Age explained in 1908, “Nevada is the only wide open state in the Union, where all sorts of gaming can be carried on lawfully.” In the boom-and-bust mining and ranching economy of Nevada, one that struggled to sustain the state’s small population, it is not surprising that some looked to vice as a key revenue source. Indeed, the Las Vegas Age fully expected the state’s largest source of income would be “from gambling and allied sports.”6 Yet in 1909 a reform coalition that included religious leaders; temperance and women’s groups; James stubbs, the president of the University of Nevada ; Governor Denver Dickerson; and U.s. senator Francis Newlands persuaded the legislature to make “it illegal to deal or play a range of...

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