Quiet, Please!

Growing up in the little southern Indiana town of Petersburg, Willard Brenton Hargrave was regarded as a dull boy. Playmates called him "Dummy." Teachers despaired of his learning anything. At 13 the Methodist preacher's son was in juvenile court, threatened with reform school. But the judge, noticing that Willard Hargrave seemed to pay little attention to the court proceedings, wondered whether he had heard what went on. A doctor's examination showed that the "dummy" was half deaf, probably as a result of chicken pox.

After World War 1 duty as a bugler, Willard Hargrave worked in Los Angeles as a newsman and pressagent. He studied furiously, read what little he could find about the antisocial effects of deafness, particularly in juvenile delinquency. His National Auricular Foundation, set up in 1938 next door to Los Angeles County's Juvenile Hall, has tested the hearing of 40,000 youngsters. Hargrave holds no medical degree but has turned himself into an expert audiometrist, has lectured on audiology to graduate audiences in several California universities.

Last week Hargrave, 51, produced a long and weighty report to show that countless industrial workers have hearing defects, and that many result from noisy working conditions. Such defects, Hargrave argues, reduce efficiency, impair health and affect the workers' home life. The source of his data: 2,549 workers at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard (now closed) whose cornmandant had invited Hargrave to make the study. Amid the clang of steel, the rat-a-tat-tat of jackhammers and riveting machines, Earman Hargrave interviewed man after man. Some of his findings: P:| Even the hard of hearing had no trouble with common shop talk, e.g., such words as blower, rivet, steel. But unfamiliar words spoken by strangers were unintelligible under the same conditions. P: "The stone-deaf learn to be careful, but those who have a deficiency that they do not know about are a serious menace to themselves and to others." One youth, injured three times by falling metal, had failed each time to hear a cry of "Look out!" Hargrave's test showed serious, unsuspected damage to his hearing. P: More than half the shipyard workers examined by Hargrave had subnormal hearing; 27% had serious defects. Operators of ear-splitting chipping guns showed serious defects in 52% of cases, but in quieter trades the rate was under 10%. P: Workers with poor hearing (whether they know it or not) are emotionally upset. Instead of becoming dulled to noise, they become super-sensitive to it. Said one chipper: "When I go home I want peace & quiet more than food. If my kids make a racket, I feel like whipping 'em right away." Hargrave, who wears an inconspicuous hearing aid, believes that much ear damage could be prevented if workers on noisy jobs would wear plastic ear plugs.

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