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the art of expressing sentiment in sound
up into the realm of intelligence and creative
genius.
The progress of the race is measured
by the span from the crazy sun dance of
the savage to the Beethoven symphony.
But we have not yet felt any serious
pressure toward making street sounds
musical. Iron tire trucks still rattle over
cobblestones with din and thunder.
Street cars roar, screech and clang.
Vocal advertisements aim to attract
attention, even as billboards, electric
signs and street car advertisements, by
the impact of their impudence and their
annoying quality upon the spirits of the
passers-by aim to catch the wearied eye.
Everybody knows what an assassin of
silence the motor speed demon can be as
he races through a quiet suburban street
late at night with his muffler cut out.
It is at such moments that the tired commuter
prays for the most vicious brand
of government control.
But this is an age of noise; one can
almost believe that people enjoy it, so
tenaciously do they cling to their pet
discords. Nowadays there is no quiet
even in the forest, where, in the loneliest
camp, there is likely to be a gramophone.
On the placid bosom of the distant pond
is a chug-chug boat. Here
is a specimen of the desire
for speed in the very
midst of nature's most
deliberate moments—and
noise is the invariable and
inevitable corollary of
speed.
"Boston is probably the
noisiest city in the world,
noisier even than Naples",
wails one who has spent
his life there dodging
motor cars by day and
trying, by night, to crowd
in eight hours of undisturbed
sleep between the
last sporting extra and
the resounding thud of the milk bottle
on the door step. "In what other
city would such thunderous street
ASSASSINS OF SILENCE 445
cars be allowed ? In what other city
would night-working garages be permitted
near dwelling houses ? In what
other town would night-work on the
streets be allowed to torture the sick in
their beds or all those needing sleep?
But in the midst of it all our larger
cities are beginning to adopt anti-noise
ordinances as if they were awaking to
the situation. Washington, Baltimore,
Boston, New York, Buffalo, Cincinnati,
Cleveland, Hartford, Kansas City, Brooklyn,
Little Rock, Louisville, Minneapolis,
Milwaukee, New Bedford, St. Louis, San
Francisco, Omaha, Erie, Grand Rapids,
Jacksonville and Portland, Oregon, have
all begun systematic work for comparative
city quiet. Among nuisances and
noises coming under the ban in most of
these cities are the hand organ pest,
hornblowers, soapbox orators, street
hawking, roosters, sirens, steam whistles
and the like.
Some day, perhaps, we will know from
study the psychology of noise and its
effects upon the human system. Will
ear-drums and sensitive nerves eventually
become useless ? Or will the city of the
future add to human longevity and happiness
by changing all these to beauty
and music?
The Diners, the Waiters, the Syncopated Jaz Bands
and the Brass-Lunged Cabaret Shouters Combine to
Make an Inferno of Any Bright-Light Cafe