From The Indianapolis Times, Wednesday, December 2, 1914: Mayor Joseph E. Bell asserts in an open letter to Rev. Marion C. Pearson, executive secretary of the Indianapolis Church Federation, that Indianapolis is a moral city; the wine rooms have been abolished; open gambling has ceased; and open resorts and vice have been suppressed. In a few cases a sensational and vulgar dance called the “hoochee coochee” has been performed, but “In no other city of equal size in the country are conditions so clean and orderly as Indianapolis….I do not intend to attempt to ‘lock up’ Indianapolis and make it a dead and lifeless place,” writes the mayor. In reply, a resolution adopted by the Church Federation expressed, “…surprise and regret [in] this attitude assumed by Mayor Bell in reference to moral conditions in this city….”