PUBLIC HEALTH VERSUS THE NOISE NT. JISANCE

BY IMOQEN B. O A K L E Y ~

Philadelphia

FEW years ago I went to one of the college settlements of Phil- adelphia to speak to an audience of women toilers who had been A gathered from the neighboring tenements. I told them what

the city was doing for them, and what they could do for the city in return, and incidentally I asked them what the3 considered the greatest evil in their crowded tenement life.

What we cannot stand is the noise. It never stops. It is killing us. We work hard all day and need sleep and rest a t night. No one can sleep till mid- night and all the noise begins again a t five. Many of us have husbands who work all night and must get their sleep during the day, but they get no sound sleep with all the noise that goes on about us. You can get away from the noise during the summer, but we cannot. We are right here in the middle of it all our lives. Now, what can your civic club do for us?”

I had to tell her we could do nothing. There are no laws against use- less noise in Philadelphia. Complaints can be made, of course, under the general law of nuisance; but to go to a magistrate, make the nec- essary complaints, and attend a series of hearings would take more time and more money than any of those women have at their disposal. Al- though thecivic club could do nothing then to help those tired-outwomen, it began at once an agitation against useless noise.

The first thing I did personally was to make a list of the useless noises which I could hear from my own window, and I found that between 5 a.m. and midnight there was an entirely useless and preventable noise on an average of every five minutes. I sent this list to a widely-read paper, and its publication brought me a shower of letters each one tell- ing of some useless noise that tormented the writer and thanking me for bringing the subject of noise to the attention of the public. The large majority of these letters came from the tenement districts, and taught me two important facts: First, that the people of the slums do not like

1 Mrs. Oakley is chairman of the committee on noise of the American Civic Associa- tion and for many years was chairman of the committee on civil service reform of the Genera1 Federation of Women’s Clubs. She has been actively identified with civic movements during the past 25 years, holding at various times prominent positions.

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One woman rose and said, “I speak for every woman here.

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noise, as popularly supposed; they hate it, and second, the demand thaf useless noise be stilled is not merely to protect those who are ill, but to protect those who are well; to prevent them from becoming ill.

Apologists for noise say that those who differ with them are nervous cranks; that they imagine discomfort when none exists; that they are the idle rich who would not hear the noise if they had something to keep their minds and bodies busy.

They are not the idle rich, they are the toiling poor, they have more than enough to do. Many of them never heard the words “nervous invalid,” yet they say they are dying of noise. When they claim that constant noise is undermining their health, they are simply in accord with the best medi- cal science. Dust and noise, say our physicians and sanitarians, are two great evils of the day. Dust because it steals into the remotest corners of our homes bearing with it countless miscroscopic enemies, and noise because of its destructive effect upon our nerves.

No arguments are needed to prove the effect of noise upon the auditory nerve. Doctor Clarence Blake of Boston, one of the most eminent of the world’s aurists says: “Diseases of the ear are increasing with the increase of noise. If the noise of our cities is to continue, we shall be a deaf race. As the eye requires intervals of darkness so the ear requires intervals of silence to keep it in perfect health.”

It is a singular thing that the ear is the only organ of sense that has no legal protection. It insists upon the cleanliness of all articles which the public touches. It does not allow disgusting or indecent signs; billboards are condemned because they offend the eye. It enacts pure food rules and regulations, thereby pro- tecting the health through the sense of taste, but i t leaves the ear the helpless victim of every assaulting sound.

Logically the ear should receive the most protection from the law since it is itself defenseless. We can use deodorizers and disinfectants against foul smells; we can close our eyes to offensive sights, but our ears must remain open to the most offensive sounds. The ear, too, is the shortest avenue to the brain. The editor of the Journal of Pediatrics asked as long ago as 1897, “May it not be possible that much of our startling in- crease in insanity is due to the continuous noise of our cities? May not the brain be affected by the ceaseless assaults through the ear?” The Boston Medical Surgical Journal in 1890 declared noise to be ( (a nuisance and a danger.” The American Journal of Public Hygiene in 1906 claimed that noise is harmful to healthy persons:

First, because it necessitates concentrated attention, thereby increas- ing the liability t o nervous fatigue; and

Second, because it interferes with the necessary amount of sleep. Ordi- nary attention does not produce fatigue; it is a normal action of the

My numerous suffering correspondents disprove the theory.

The law forbids offensive odors.

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brain, but when concentrated and absorbed attention is required, nervous fatigue is produced in exact proportion t o the amount of concentration. To listen or to think in the midst of noise requires intense concentration, which produces nervous fatigue, and this fatigue produced and repro- duced day after day leads indubitably t o neurasthenia. Almost all sick persons are in a state of pathological fatigue, and loud, disagreeable noises increase this fatigue to the danger point.

The same journal is responsible for the statement that good mental work cannot be done in noisy surroundings. It is quite true that opera- tives in mills and drivers of rattling drays may seem to acquire a consid- erable immunity to noise, but we must remember that these occupations do not involve much thought, and moreover, as yet no one has tried to get at the sufferings which these operatives and drivers doubtless endure.

Habituation to noise may be possible to persons of exceptionally strong nerves and power of concentration, but even though habituation be seem- ingly achieved, the work done under the influence of noise is inferior to that done amid quiet surroundings.

On this same subject of habituation, Professor Sedgwick, of Boston, says that people in crowded cities are in a constant state of nervous fatigue and the fact that many of them do not like the quiet of the country is a proof of their pathological condition.

The noise apologists who insist that noise is not harmful when we become accustomed to it, must be reminded that we can grow so accus- tomed to foul air that fresh air becomes absolutely disagreeable, yet no one would argue from this that foul air is not injurious, or that i t is as good for the lungs as fresh air.

But bad as are the nervous effects of continuous noise, sudden and intermittent noises are infinitely more to be dreaded. Each loud and sudden noise produces a distinct nerve-shock and these shocks often repeated cause a loss in nerve-vitality. Immunity to such noises can never be attained for the sound waves of the air thrown into violent action by a loud sudden noise, strike actual physical blows upon the auditory nerve and a constant succession of such blows inevitably injures and finally destroys the delicate mechanism of the ear. Bells, whistles, gongs, and the startling shrieks of street-vendors are therefore more injurious to the health than the continuous roar of railway trains, or the monotonous whirr of machinery in mills and factories.

The London Lancet declares that street noises are potent factors in undermining the health of city-dwellers, especially brain-workers, making them neurasthenic and unfit for long-continued effort, and i t warns the public that as a national danger the possible “Yellow Peril” fades into insignificance beside the present and actual “Yelling Peril” which makes pandemonium of our streets.

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Under the heading “Police news” a London paper reports that a boy was taken in charge for whistling and shouting at night. The magistrate inquired about the neighborhood. “Neighborhood of gentry,” said the officer. First-class people need first-class sleep,” was the decision of the magistrate, and the boy was committed for disturbing the peace. The sentiment is growing that all classes of people need first-class sleep. According to the Philadelphia Medical Journal every physician and every educated person should wage incessant war against unnecessary noises :

First, because it is certain they increase the sick-rate by murdering sleep. Second, because they increase the death-rate by destroying the vital and recuperative powers of the sick. Third, because they dull and brutalize the nervous system of those who have to withstand their patho- genic influence. Fourth, because they serve to make the sensitive and cultured separate themselves in their search for quiet from the masses, thus serving to intensify the license of the noise-makers by lessening the checks upon their crimes.

Dr. Ernest J. Lederle, late health commissioner of New York City, in an address before the international congress of scientists, held in St. Louis in 1903, asserted that nervous prostration and our intense American excitability are due quite as much to the nerve-racking noise of our cities as to the strain and rush of our daily lives, and he was convinced that the time had come-and this was in 1903-when physicians must take cognizance of the fact that noise is an element to consider in the cause of disease, and that the prevention of unnecessary noise is as much the duty of the medical profession as the prevention of unnecessary dirt. Doctor Lederle called upon boards of health throughout the country to take prompt action for the suppression of all noises that cannot be proved to be unavoidable.

All of the authorities I have quoted agree that loud sudden noises are the most injurious to the nerves and they agree also that whistles, bells, gongs, street pianos, the crowing of roosters, the barking of dogs, and the outcries of street-vendors are loud and sudden noises, and must be stopped except when they can be proved to be unavoidable. Bells and whistles cannot be classed as unavoidable noises in this day of cheap and uni- versal clocks. Even church-bells, tender as are the memories connected with them, and pleasant as they sound in the far-away distance, are dis- turbing as near neighbors. I have a letter from a stenographer-and stenography is classed with the fatigue-producing occupations since it requires concentrated attention-in which she says, “I take rapid dicta- tion all day amid the distracting noise at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets, and I go home tired out and needing rest. The street-vendors and street-pianos prevent sleep in the early evening, and I am wakened every morning at 5 by the bells of a near-by church. They ring a t 5,

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at 5.30, at 6, a t 6.30, a t 7, at 7.30 and then i t is time for me to get up, having been deprived of two hours’ sleep by what seems to be an entirely unnecessary noise.”

Our American public opinion against aggressive sectarianism ought to support any attempt to prohibit the ringingof church-bells. For why should a Quaker be wakened by a Roman Catholic bell; or a Presby- terian by an Episcopal bell, or a Methodist by a Baptist bell? If church- bells could be so constructed that they would be guaranteed to waken only the members of the church in which they are hung, they could be tolerated, but so long as they continue to arouse believers in opposing faiths, our non-sectarian laws ought to be strong enough to silence them.

We shall have to consider that the gongs of the automobiles and the trolleys are to a certain extent unavoidable a t present, but the inter- national congress of aurists that met in Boston in 1913 maintained that all swift-moving vehicles should carry a horn emitting a musical note, or scale, and that this musical sound should be the same for all vehicles; the startling, clanging gong to be resorted to only in sudden danger to life.

We can find no excuse for the street pianos. My correspondents from the tenements beg to have them suppressed. “The children have their public playgrounds now,” they say, “and do not need the diversion of the street-piano.” The street-musician has really developed into a black- mailer. He has learned tha t the noise he makes is disagreeable, and he refuses to leave unless he is paid for leaving.

According to a story emanating from a New York paper, an ItaIian organ-grinder in that city was arrested for some trivial offense.

“What do you make a week?” asked the magistrate. “About twenta-five dolla,’’ answered the grinder. “What ! I 1 exciaimed the magistrate, “twenty-five dollars a week for

“Oh no, sare, notta for grind; for shut ta up and go way.” The objection to street-music is no new thing.

grinding an organ!”

More than a genera- tion ago a number of distinguished Englishmen addressed a memorial to parliament on this very subject. The letter was written by Charles Dickens and among those who signed i t were Tennyson, Millais, Holman Hunt, John Leech, Wilkie Collins, and, of course, Thomas Carlyle.

“Your correspondents,” wrote Charles Dickens, “are professors and practitioners of one or other of the arts and sciences. I n their devotion to their pursuits, tending to the peace and comfort of mankind, they are daily interrupted, harassed, ‘worried, wearied, and driven nearly mad by street-musicians. They are even made especial objects of persecution by brazen performers on brazen instruments, beaters of drums, grinders of organs, bangers of banjos, clashers of cymbals, worriers of fiddles, and bellowers of ballads, for no sooner does i t become known to those pro-

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ducers of horrible sounds that any of your correspondents have particu- lar need of quiet in their own homes than the said homes are beleaguered by discordant hosts seeking to be bought off.”

Street vendors can be silenced without injury to their trade if house- keepers will follow the advice offered by my correspondents from the tenements. Written notices saying that ice, coal, fruit, vegetables, or what not, are desired within, can be placed in the window for all dealers in such commodities to see. This simple plan, which prevails in New England cities, saves time to the housekeeper and vocal energy to the vendor, beside relieving from annoyance all that large class of people who do not desire to buy.

Newsboys can sell as many papers by offering them quietly, as by standing on corners and giving vent to inarticulate howls. It will be difficult to silence these youngsters for they really enjoy shouting. I once stopped a boy who I knew belonged to a well-to-do family and asked, “Why are you selling papers?” He grinned, and answered, “Because I like to holler.”

In point of fact, all newsboys should be removed from the temptations of the streets, and sent to continuation-schools where they could learn trades that would ensure them an honest living, and their places as sell- ers of papers should be taken by elderly men and women and cripples.

If noise is injurious to the nervous system, it follows that i t is the unre- lenting foe of the thinker, the writer, the artist, and the musician. Edmund Yeates, the Celtic poet, asks why America has made so small a contribution to the fine arts, and then answers the question himself :- “I stayed in an American town,” he says, “where a railway train with clanging bell went up and down the main street every hour of the day and night. Perhaps the arts await till some Apollo shall arise and slay that

Boards of health, as Doctor Lederle says, have power to put an end t o senseless and useless noises. If they can compel a man to be vaccinated lest he give his neighbor smallpox, they can surely compel him to cease from noises that produce nervous prostration. If they can prevent him from polluting his neighbor’s water-supply with typhoid germs, they can forbid ‘him from congesting his neighbor’s air with sounds that breed insanity.

Apologists for noise urge with an apparent show of reason that since there must be in every city so much noise that is unavoidable, it is foolish to rail against the relatively small amount that is avoidable, but the unavoidable noise of the city is the very reason why the avoidable noises should be stilled. There is so much noise that we must endure that it has become an imperative duty to the public health to silence all those noises that are unnecessary. The prayers of the night workers must not go unanswered.

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Modern civilization brings with it much labor that cannot cease with the going down of the sun. Shall the street-cleaners, telegraphers, night- watchmen, railway-employees, toilers in iron and steel, printers, report- ers, editors, doctors, nurses-shall all these great and growing armies of toilers that work through the night for the public comfort and con- venience, be allowed to take their needful sleep during the day, or shall their rest be broken and their lives shortened by the utterly useless noises made by bells and whistles, shouting vendors, shrieking newsboys, and blaring street-pianos? No one would be permitted as a means of adver- tisement to flash light into the weary eyes of these sleepers, yet vendors, pedlers, newsboys and grinders flash all manner of noises into their ears with impunity. If such noises are to go on, it must be in places where sleep is unnecessary, and illness unknown.