In a signal of how wartime shaped the rhetoric around vice, Peoria’s Ministerial association accused the city’s brothels of committing sabotage by infecting over forty soldiers with venereal diseases.
The association argued against the mayor’s position that a clean-up of the red-light district would simply lead vice to spread beyond its boundaries. It also lashed Peoria’s citizens for failing to respond with sufficient enthusiasm to an earlier Jaycee campaign to clean up the city.