Focus Frostburg - Frostburg State University's annual event which aims to teach students, staff and the wider community about climate control and sustainability. This year it took place on Wednesday April 20th, just two days before Earth Day. From 9am to 5pm, talks and discussions took place throughout the Lane University Center building, catering for all tastes, be it reducing energy costs at home or the links between faith and sustainability, there was something for everyone. Display boards lined the lobbies of the first and second floors of the Lane Center, as various departments of the university presented their research and others had entertaining activities to try, such as making photo frames from recycled materials at the Recycled Creation Station.
At 3pm, Dr. Greg Wood, from the university’s history department, took to the floor of the Atkinson Room in the Lane Center to present his talk on ‘Industry, Urbanization and the Production of Noise, 1890 – 1920.’ Opening with an extract from Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘The Jungle,’ Dr. Wood described a meatpacking plant in Chicago in the early 1900s. It was an accurate description of the actual noises that citizens struggled with in the early 20th Century as industry continued to sweep the nation’s cities. Dr. Wood went on to mention the workers lifting the hogs onto hooks to drain the fluids, “the screams and squeals were thought to be so deafening it would explode the walls,” he stated.
Throughout Dr. Wood’s lecture, he described the many sources of noise pollution in Chicago during that period. Factories, steel mills and above all trains polluted the city with constant noise which failed to cease because “labour never stops in Chicago.” The medics of the time were especially concerned about the health of those working in such factories. “Workers were listening themselves to death because they were overwhelmed by the noise in their workplace,” said Dr. Wood.
As the presentation continued, one became far more conscious of the sounds in the room. Dr. Wood’s voice addressed the audience over the rattle of the air conditioning and the rustle of student’s taking notes for various classes became considerably more apparent. Dr. Wood spoke of the noises, both organic and inorganic, which exasperated the people of Chicago daily. He mentioned Dr. Samuel J Jones, who in 1900 had moved over 7 times “because he was desperate to find a quiet place to live in Chicago. All day and night the sounds were in his head.” This was the main struggle for many people living and working in Chicago in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The noise never left ones head, even when they lay in bed at night, this is the reason that many ‘went crazy’. Dr. Wood’s description of a man entering a boiler shop for the first time serves as a good example of how this might begin; “immediately his ears are deafened by this onslaught of noise.” If any person employed there could not get used to the ear-splitting noise levels, they “went crazy, and quit.” Others that remained slowly became deaf, and no longer noticed the noise.
A number of solutions to the problem of noise pollution were raised at the time which Dr. Wood mentioned in his closing paragraphs. The use of hot air balloons as a mode of transport rather than trains, and the complete demolishment and rebuilding of the city with large green areas to escape from the noise of the city, as green was thought to equal quiet, were two thoughts. However, neither idea was plausible; therefore, city dwellers either became used to the noise or moved elsewhere. Finally, Dr. Wood mentioned his experience of living in a quiet town like Frostburg, “acoustically, if there is a loud argument on Bowery I can hear it!” A very different experience to living in a large city, but nowadays we are much less aware of the noise around us. We have, in retrospect, become deaf to our surroundings, much like the workers in the boiler shops of Chicago in the 1900s.
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