Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1893 — Unnecessary Noise. [ARTICLE]

Unnecessary Noise.

A medical paper has taken up the cudgels against unnecessary city noises. It declares steam whistles, factory bells, the shouts of the hawkers and the rest to be disease-produc-ing, and it presents some startling figures to prove it. It argues that as an environment these noises must breed a race “mentally stupid or hypermsthctically morbid.” However that may be, everybody knows that the noises of a great city are a nuisance, and that the greater part ,of them are unnecessary. There is not the slightest occasion for all the steam whistles on all the factories to screech f*ur times a day. The cry of the hawker is an impertinence and a breach of the peace. If none of the hawkers were permitted to yell, each would sell as much as he does now. Nine-tenths of all the piano pounding done in any city ought to be suppressed by a society for the prevention of cruelty to everybody. The love of noise is a savage instinct. With every step in civilization we more and more object to harsh, strong, unnecessary sound. But while we subdue our voices and muffle our floors with padded carpets, we have done next to nothing toward protecting ourselves against the unnecessary noises made by other people. In this matter there is a great. wo»k for the City Improvement Society to do. It will secure the abolition of bells and steam whistles and put a gag into the mouth of the street vendor, and it will render a blessed service to all sorts and conditions of civilized men. If it will reduce the sum total of pianoforte playing:—but that must go over for the millennium.