The Cordova daily times., 1922-03-01

WASHlNGION, MarCn l.-W1thln sight of the dome of the United States Capitol, near enough almost to be | Alexandria, on the Virginia shore of i, Alexandria, on the Virginia shore of the Potomac, and therein is alleged to operate divorce colony second only in flagrancy to that of world-famous Reno.
 On the sworn statement of a woman householder dwelling in that historic little hamlet. according to records re- gently made public, hundreds of di- vorces have been granted
 Investigation of some of these cases has shown that the persons have never spent a night in Alexandria and have obtained their divorces on the sworn statement of landladies that they have lived in their houses for one year prior to the filing of the suit.
 RENT RECEIPT IS PIVOT I A years residence in the state of Virginia being necessary to secure a divorce, revelations made recently 1 have shown that parties in pursuit of marital disruption paid their rent for one full year to a 1andlady and then | received receipt for same, which they then produced as evidence of their years residence in the State of Virginia. In the meantime they whiled | away the wearisOme hours that or dinarily would have to be spent in | Alexandria in some livelier city, per haps in Washington, just across the placid Potomac.
 Forty-two days was the minimum time limit in which a divorce could be secured, provided the seeker for relief was sent to the right attorney. according to statements made by land ladies and others and printed in the local press It was explained that certain staff of attorneys, adopts at serving the bonds that bind all too 1 loosely, could secure pronto service in smashing marital ties
 One landlady termed this little Reno of the East a "veritable haven of refuge for Washington people" And she had little more to say.
 "DlVORCE DUMPING GROUND"
 You know" she declared not with out some evidence of local pride, Alexandria is getting to be the dump l ing ground for Washington divorce in my house. Of course. that is, they in my house. Of course that is, they don't really stay here in fact. They pay me the rent for the year, and they send themselves an occasional letter through hthe regular mail, and then when their cases come up they produce these letters and the receipt which I gave them as evidence of the fact that they have lived here one year. It's all very simple"
 Dr. Wilbur F. Curtis, superintend- ent of the International Reform Bu reau and more widely known as the star patient in the blue law" fever spreading throughout the land, thinks it is anything but simple" He thinks it's awful" Dr. Crafts said, to be explicit:
 l "Profiteering in divorces is an awful thing. The wholesale issuance of divorces, as it has been done in Alexandria, is a disgrace to that city and to the nation. It is almost in- conceivable that such conditions could obtain in Alexandria, or for that mat |, ter elsWhere."
 DIVORCE MILLS NAMED 1 Doe" Crafts then flung rebuke at Reno and other Far West divorce paradises. He said Reno was "a di- vorce sewer" serving as a drain for marital garbage. "Those places in the Far West are divorce sewers, and the thought that we have divorce sewer so close to Washington should awak- en the people all over the country. | Another locality which Dr. Crafts indicted as a moral drawback to the nation was Trinity County, California. He said it was another "sewer" As a matter of fact, Trinity is even more picturesque than Reno, for it is in Trinity that the Klamath and Eel rivers start on their trickling voyages, and it is the haven of western camp CTS and western sports as we'll. An other one is Mono County, Cali. fornia, probably the most scenic back ground ever discovered for a divorce arena.