Quiet, Please!

It all started with an advertising man's dream--a vision of a helpless, pliable throng, ears open and guards down, known in the trade as a "captive audience." Trapped in Manhattan's cavernous Grand Central Terminal, where each day 500,000 persons swarm to & fro, was the biggest audience in captivity. The temptation was irresistible. Grand Central expanded its public address system into a small broadcasting studio, laid in a supply of canned music, syrupy-voiced announcers and loudspeakers (82 of them), and went into business. Advertisers eagerly paid $1,800 a week for the privilege of spraying music and shouting the merits of their beer, cough drops, cigarettes, chewing gum and automobiles at defenseless travelers.

The Din of Dissent. At first the vast, unorganized army of commuters and travelers reacted with the numbed resignation of men & women who knew the 2Oth Century has its inescapable hazards. But soon the stirrings of dissent rose above the jumble of raspy music and unctuous plugs.

Last week, before the New York State Public Service Commission, Grand Central and its captive audience met in combat. Spokesmen for the railroads defended their right to raise revenue with noise, said a poll by an outfit known as Fact Finders Inc. showed over 85% of the commuters approved, hauled out a psychiatrist who said the noise could harm nobody who was all right in the head. The whole storm of protest, complained that railroads, was started by "an adult comic book," i.e., The New Yorker magazine.

Editor Harold Ross, a man who gets a lot of professional mileage out of his frustrations, appeared in person to answer. He identified himself caustically: "I am the editor of an adult comic book . . . to put it heavy-handedly . . . and I commute back & forth through the terminal." A poll by "Datum Diggers," Ross cracked, would show 85.5% against the noise. The broadcasts were so loud nobody could read, so bad nobody could understand them, he said. "It varies," Ross grumbled, "but it's all bad . . . I just want to be left alone. I can do all right with my own thoughts, without them thinking for me or singing lullabies." The New York Central's attorney asked Ross if his hearing was all right. "It's perfect," snapped the editor, "but I'm thinking of having an eardrum punctured."

Earlids Wanted. Other victims spoke up. An indignant woman told of waiting in line 15 minutes at the Information Desk, then losing the attendant's reply in a crash of sound; she had to go back and start all over again. Another vowed that she would grow "earlids" if she knew how to. Said Psychiatrist Harold Harris, a commuter: "This noise could be the straw that breaks the camel's back . . . Real physical illness . . . like peptic ulcers or hypertension . . . are due to suppressed rage and hostility."

By week's end, the issue was clear-cut. It was a case of free enterprise v. what Justice Brandeis once defined as the individual's "right to be let alone." New York's five Public Service commissioners retired to give the matter careful deliberation in some nice, quiet place--not Grand Central.

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