August 5, 1943 Help Wanted ad

1937-1970

Card dealing was a male-dominated profession in Nevada’s casinos until 1937, when Harolds Club, in Reno, put the first woman at a 21 table to deal.

Co-owner Harold Smith previously had been hiring women, mostly family members, for other jobs on the gambling club floor — chip stacking and roulette wheel spinning, for instance — but never dealing.

Smith’s concern had been that women would be too-easy targets for cheaters and, consequently, the casino would get fleeced. (A total of up to 10,000 silver dollars sat on the various tables during a typical night.)

Smith, though, soon realized women could hold their own, and both genders enjoyed gambling with a “pretty, smiling dealer” (Lima News, Aug. 4, 1943).

With World War II and the resulting shortage of men to employ, women filled the gap at Harolds Club. By that time, 90 percent of the employees there were female. Smith launched a school to train women to become professional dealers. They learned how to deal cards, spin wheels, rake in chips, compute payoffs and watch for cheaters’ tricks, among other skills.

Smith advertised in local newspapers’ Help Wanted sections for recruits in ads indicating, “Men Please Do Not Apply” (Nevada State Journal, Aug. 4, 1943). The pay was $25 per week while attending his school, then up to $60 per week when hired. Students ran the gamut, and included housewives, divorcées (women living in Nevada the requisite six weeks to get an expedited divorce), telephone operators, school teachers, sales clerks, stenographers and newspaper reporters.

By 1943, casinos throughout Northern Nevada were hiring graduates of Smith’s school.

Slow To Change

It was the opposite in Las Vegas. Although women worked as dealers in nearby towns such as Henderson and North Las Vegas, none did on the Strip or in downtown Sin City until 1970, nearly three decades later.

That year, the Silver Slipper, a Howard Hughes-owned casino, hired the first — 47-year-old Jean Brady, who had years of experience from dealing at other Silver State gambling houses.

Sources

1976

The Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California ruled any tips, or tokes, that individuals give to casino dealers is a form of taxable income.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Batch of Dollars” by Alexander Kalina

1944-1945

In the final year of World War II, three related mandates hampered Nevada’s gambling clubs, but, in general, casinos willingly withstood the hits out of a sense of patriotic duty.

These directives, imposed by the United States’ war mobilization agency, followed a national call for roughly 200,000 more “able-bodied men, willing to do hard work” between the ages of 17 and 35 (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 21, 1944). The requirements, listed chronologically, were:

• In January, all horse and dog racing in the country was to stop immediately, which it did. The federal government initiated this to combat absenteeism, as much as 30 percent, at war plants located near the racetracks.

The casinos offering betting on these sports suffered a decrease in business. Whereas customers no longer could place bets on races at U.S. places like Pimlico, Jamaica, Belmont and Narragansett, they still could get some action at certain local casinos that subscribed to a race track wire service that covered races held in Mexico and Cuba.

• In early February, more than 300 of Nevada’s gambling dealers, bartenders and other non-essential workers were to begin working at plants and industries in Nevada and on the West Coast, which were crucial to the war effort. Consequently, casinos lost key personnel.

• All U.S. entertainment spots were to close at midnight starting on Feb. 26. They included gambling enterprises, bars, night clubs, theaters, sports arenas, dance halls, roadhouses, saloons, bars and the like, public and private. Restaurants that served food only (no alcohol) were exempted. Affected businesses could reopen at 8 a.m.

“The action is the most drastic of its kind yet promulgated in Washington during the present war,” noted the Nevada State Journal (Feb. 20, 1945).

The reason for the midnight closing was to conserve coal, manpower and transportation and help boost morale of active military service members, all of whom had been prohibited from entering or being in those places after midnight. It also was to help reduce the rate of civilian workers employed in critical industries not showing up to work.

Not only did Nevada’s casinos experience a drop in business, but, also, those open around the clock had to lay off their graveyard shift workers.

Relief From The Dictates

The Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945. The following day, the U.S. director of war mobilization immediately abolished the midnight curfew and the ban on horse and dog racing.

Sources

Photo from pond5.com: “American Flag Background” by ozaiachin