Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-10-09

Dear Sir: Although living in George
town, you are an encyclopedia of gen.
eral information. Please answer this
question:
Georgetown was formerly known as
| the City of the Dead where one could
enjoy the peace that passeth under
standing Now it has become High
way to Hell.
streets that we're not even disturbed
by the football of policeman are now,
day and night. pandemonium centers.
take Thlrtieth street from the GEM
etery to M, street Il live on Thirtieth
street, from dawn to midnight. Pom
derous trucks, not all employed In car
rying sinners and cinders from and to
/ hell. but loaded with iron girders, sand
bricks. etc, = oil tanks, sight
seing BUSES, create a continuous chatter
and not only shake the residences but
our dispositions, increasing blood pres
sure and the coming of new expletives-
| all known ones being exhausted.
| And then at night. when sleep Is
supposed to knit up the raveled sleeve
Of care, promptly at l am. comes a
procession of milk wagons drawn by
! Percherons whose resounding hoofbeats
are funeral march to sleep. Until
daybreak these aids to profanity are
assisted by painting engines, screeching
| brakes singing sirens and Volsteadian
violators crowding the broad Highway
to He'll. Explain it If you can. From
INSOMNIA"
r.
The problem presented is clear enough,
but it would take more than encyclo-
pedic information, which the writer
hastens to disclairn, to answer It,
Its solution must remain to future
age, when a general civic sense Of the
nuisance and distress of unnecessary
city noises will have become widespread.
Today only few In any given netrop-
oils feel the need for reform in this
matter. and even less number have the
power to express their feelings.
The day will come, 1t is reasonably
certain. when the whole problem of
reducing urban noise will be seen to
be the duty of health officers and other
municipal directors at large. Life is
not all muscle, but largely nerve supply.
and noise is now known to be de-
stroyer of nervous tonicity.
Today any one who speaks up against
noise. as such, is held by others to be
TOO nervous" but in the day which
is not so far off. after all, every one will
realize that such a person was in ad-
vance of his age.
IdSb WCCh > LoouC Va eAAC A4ApCA al La
gest contained some hopeful news,
drawn by that busy and useful maya
zine from British publication, the
Nineteenth Century. The Digest quotes
Prof. Henry j. Spooner of the London
Polytechnic School Of Engineering as
writing that "the noise question is a
world problem, and very con1prehen-
sive one at that involving interrelated
factors of wide range and great
observation-disclosures that. strangely
enough, have hitherto received little or
no attention from the authorities re-
sponsible for the health of the COM
munity"
The London. Times is quoted by the
I Literary Digest as commenting edi-
torially. I'm no previous age has the
din been so hideous and so universal as
1t is today"
All this is theoretical, but highly
necessary to stir up the world to a
realization that such a problem as the
plague of noise" actually exists. Even
those who are sensitive enough to be
hurt by it-and there are millions of
these-have grown so used to it by de-
grees that they are likely to regard the
problem with smile. AS they have
grown older the racket of the city has
grown with them, so that in a sense
they are Injured to the noise, and are
able to counterfeit 1t to some degree.