State Journal-Register
When Elise Morrow critiqued Springfield for the Saturday Evening Post in 1947, local leaders reacted with wounded pride, insults and pompous denial.
Among their many complaints was Morrow’s passing reference to the city’s tolerance for gambling and prostitution.
“Springfield’s vice may be no worse than that of many American cities, but it is more obvious,” she wrote. “Gambling and prostitution blossom like the rose in Springfield. Within the city limits and lining the periphery of the town and county there is what one of the first citizens describes, with inverse pride, as probably the largest collection of taverns, joints, and low dives functioning in any city of less than 100,000 population in the country.”