Las Vegas Seen as 'Sin City'
Las Vegans' need to conform to national civil rights standards demonstrated that although most visitors are not traditional or ideal citizens they still need to be treated properly. These visitors often foreign desire and seek approval like everyone else.
Newcomers to southern Nevada needed reassurance that their community was not as abnormal as it appeared. Moreover, they needed to convince themselves that the decision to relocate in Las Vegas had been the right one.
Like residents of earlier times in the western part of the country they cared about the opinions of Easterners. The nation did not always think highly of Las Vegas however, Las Vegans had seemingly insulated themselves as private citizens from the dangers of their own city more effectively than from the sting of national reproach.
Outsiders' condemnation did not make Las Vegans less individualistic or more traditional urbanities but it did encourage them to identify more closely with their adopted city. They responded to the nation's allegations first by denying them altogether and then by taking steps to prove them untrue by trying to make their hometown conform more closely to American norms.
A precarious sense of community came to be created in part by the defensive reaction to residents to criticism of southern Nevada. While Nevada neglected 'it's poor, it's sick, it's socially misshapen it was also known as 'coddling known racketeers.' The charge that the desert resort tolerated underworld figures made Las Vegans suspect around the country.
Ford Frick the commissioner of professional baseball preserved the honor of the national pastime by vowing in 1955 to prohibit any team, major-league or minor, from staying overnight in the gambling capital. Critics determined that the evils tolerated by Las Vegans, chiefly gambling and organized crime, corrupted residents.
Some writers portrayed southern Nevadans as avaricious exploiters of such human weaknesses as the temptation to gamble and suggested that far from being fun, vacations spent in casinos were nightmares that taxed visitors more than they could afford. In addition to corrupting the citizens exposed to it casino gaming reportedly inhibited the evolution of a typical stable economy in Nevada.
The services orientation of the state's postindustrial economy lent some truth to this charge for between 1950 and 1960 the portion of civilian workers engaged in manufacturing never topped 5 percent.
Many industrialists preferred not to locate to Las Vegas because of the reputation of the city. The corruption supposedly generated by gambling not only made Las Vegans suspect but also allegedly reduced their fitness for the honest work that industry offered. An economy based on gambling seemed completely unproductive. To many the city was only good for transferring money from tourist's pockets to mobster's coffers.
