The Crittenden Automotive Library

AUTOMOBILE HORNS.

AUTOMOBILE HORNS.

Charles Vezin
The New York Times
June 4, 1910

A Possible Cause of Growing Class Antagonism.

To the Editor of The New York Times:
Maxim Gorki, in describing New York, speaks of the ever-present "honk" of the automobile, suggesting titanic geese. To what would he have likened the ill-natured snarl of the "buzzer" horn, the most unlovely of all the sounds in the din of our age of unrest? The old honk is mellow by comparison. If we cannot hope that

Silence like a poultice fall
To heal the wounds of sound,

let us confine the wounds to the unavoidable ones and not use such aural dum-dum bullets.

One of the college Presidents recently said that nothing is promoting class antagonism so much as the automobile. This antagonism can only be intensified by such gross disregard of the rights of the majority as the infliction of this din. It is the most aggressive, insolent, and misanthropic note that mechanical ingenuity has evolved. It banishes all that sense of repose and of aloofness from strife that one looks for in the country. Its use has been suppressed by law in Detroit, the home of the automobile, and this example should be followed by other cities or States and the nuisance universally abated.
CHARLES VEZIN.
New York, June 2, 1910