In the design and construction of office <p 114> buildings, stores, and factories in noisy neighborhoods, too little consideration is given to existing means of excluding or deadening outside sounds, though the newer office buildings are examples of initiative in this direction; not only are they of sound-proof construction, but in many instances they have replaced the noisy pavements of the streets with blocks which reduce the clatter to a minimum. In both improvements they have been emulated by some of the great retail stores which have shut out external noises and reduced those within to a point where they no longer distract the attention of clerks or customers from the business of selling and buying. In many, however, clerks are still forced to call aloud for cash girls or department managers, and the handling of customers at elevators is attended by wholly unnecessary shouting and clash of equipment. Of all distractions, sound is certainly the most common and the most insistent in its appeal. The individual efforts towards reducing it quoted above were stimulated by the hope <p 115> of immediate and tangible profit--sound- proof offices commanding higher rents and quiet stores attracting more customers. In not a few cases, manufacturers have gone deeper, however, recognizing that anything which claims the attention of an employee from his work reduces his efficiency and cuts profits, even though he be a piece worker. In part this explains the migration of many industries to the smaller towns and the development of a new type of city factory with sound- proof walls and floors, windows sealed against noise, and a system of mechanical ventilation. The individual manufacturer or merchant, therefore, need not wait for a general crusade to abate the noise, the smoke, and the other distractions which reduce his employee's effectiveness. In no small measure he can shut out external noises and eliminate many of those within. Loud dictation, conversations, clicking typewriters, loud-ringing telephones, can all be cut to a key which makes them virtually indistinguishable in an office of any size. More and more the big open office as <p 116> an absorbent of sound seems to be gaining in favor. In one of the newest and largest of these I know, nearly all the typewriting machines are segregated in a glass-walled room, and long-distance telephone messages can be taken at any instrument in the great office. _Like sound in its imperative appeal for attention is the consciousness of strangers passing one's desk or windows_. Movement of fellow employees about the department, unless excessive or unusual, is hardly noticed; let an individual or a group with whom we are not acquainted come within the field of our vision, and they claim attention immediately. For this reason shops or factories whose windows command a busy street find it profitable to use opaque glass to shut out the shifting scene.