Augusta was booming in 1941.

A military buildup had downtown streets swelling with soldiers from the nearby Army camp.

That sudden arrival of thousands of virile young men led to a rise in something else – prostitution.

The city quietly took a practical approach to such romantic commerce and thought it best to do what it could for the safety of the warriors who would soon be expected to fight for freedom.

Instead of cracking down on all the female prostitutes doing business in our town, the city began licensing and inspecting them.

Yes, Augusta, Ga., which in recent years went to court to keep an adult book store from opening on Gordon Highway, used to license and inspect its hookers.

According to The Chronicle’s 1941 archives, the ladies of the evening would present themselves for inspection by local physicians. If they were free from venereal disease, they kept their licenses.

The thinking seemed to have been that it was more important to keep our defenders of liberty free from illness than to institute a moral or legal requirement we didn’t think they’d fulfill.

 “At first the women were reluctant to cooperate,” The Chronicle reported. “They didn’t exactly know what the campaign really meant to them. They failed to recognize the value of their health,” police officers said. “After the first few months, they began to ‘come around’. “

 Here’s how it worked, according to The Chronicle story.

When a woman registered, she was fingerprinted, photographed and classified. Then, each Tuesday the woman would undergo a physical check-up. By Friday the women were required to turn in their certificates to Police Sgt. Irvin Connors. If any disease was discovered, they had to get treatment.

Soldiers were advised to demand to see such updated health certificates before concluding a financial transaction for services.

 But then the preachers found out.

The next thing you know, the Richmond County grand jury was looking into the municipal regulation of sin.

 One of the region’s foremost authors urged understanding.

 Edison Marshall, the celebrated novelist living at his Seven Gables home in North Augusta, took time out from writing popular fiction to write a letter to The Chronicle.

 “The soldiers want girls and are going to get them,” he wrote. Regulation, he concluded was the only practical solution.

“The problem of prostitution in army camp towns cannot be solved by the moral indignation of good citizens,” he wrote.

“The traffic cannot be eradicated in a city of Augusta’s size even in normal times, let alone when 20,000 or more young men from all walks of life spend their leaves and money within her borders.

“Thousands of these solders will want girls and are going to get them, regardless of anything the ministers’ association and the police force can do about it,” he wrote.

 Marshall knew what it was like to be a solider in Augusta.

The Indiana native had been stationed here during World War I as an Army private. He made friends, married a local girl and lived here for the next quarter century.

 His letter was reported as front page news in September 1941. Also reported on the front page were the grand jury’s efforts to handle the minister complaints.

Grand jury foreman N. Flournoy Fiske said he had received the preacher protests, but too late to convene the other grand jurors.

 The licensing issue then seems to have been delegated to a back room for further review.

 On Nov. 8, The Chronicle reported, Public Safety Chief John Kennedy called off the prostitute licensing program. Most of them did not have venereal disease anyway, he said.