The Cyclopædia of American Biography/Rice, Mrs. Isaac L.
RICE, Mrs. Isaac L., social reformer, b. in New Orleans, La., 2 May, 1860, daughter of Nathaniel and Annie Hyneman. Her parents, being of high social standing and in prosperous circumstances, were able to afford her excellent educational advantages. After a classical and musical training, she entered the Women's Medical College of New York Infirmary to prepare herself for the medical profession. In 1885 she graduated with her degree of M.D., but instead of taking up professional duties she married and devoted herself to her home and the training of her children. It was while living on Riverside Drive in New York City, overlooking the Hudson River, that Mrs. Rice first had her attention called, rather forcibly, to the constant noise of whistling carried on during the night by the tugboats. This constant din caused her much distress, and she was on the point of giving up her residence and seeking a more quiet neighborhood, when she accidentally learned that these same noises were causing a great deal of suffering to the patients of the hospitals in the same neighborhood. Realizing that others beside herself were disturbed, Mrs. Rice immediately determined to make an investigation for the purpose of determining whether the noises from the river were necessary. Records which she caused to be made showed that over three thousand siren or whistle blasts could be counted from one point between the hours of 10 P.M. and 7 A.M. Further investigation showed that many of the boats began a promiscuous whistling while still two miles distant from the piers for which they were making and kept it up until their actual arrival, the object being to awaken sleeping watchmen or to recall the crews of their tows from the saloons adjoining the dock. No limit was set to the size of the sirens used or their capacity for noise. Furthermore, it was also made clear by further study of the situation that this promiscuous noise actually endangered the safety of navigation on the river, as it drowned the regular signals of steamboats meeting each other and by this means kept clear of each other. Mrs. Rice now determined to wage a determined campaign for the suppression of unnecessary noise on the river at night. In this decision she was more and more strengthened as she gradually learned, of the great number of people who had been disturbed and had until then suffered in silence, supposing no remedy possible. And for a time it did seem as though no remedy was possible; the municipal and State authorities claimed that they had no authority on the river, which was under Federal jurisdiction, while Federal officials felt that the suppression of noise could not be sanctioned by any existing law. Finally, after the campaign had been waged for over a year and Mrs. Rice had been joined by many others, Congressman William S. Bennett, of New York, introduced a bill in Congress which amended Section 4405 of the Revised Statutes of the United States and gave the supervising inspectors of steamboats authority to curtail all needless noise on the part of river boats. As a result it was shown that the noise on the river during the nights was gradually diminished, until it amounted to a decrease of 85 per cent. Meanwhile, encouraged by this success and by the wide support she was receiving, not only from hospital superintendents and others who had suffered from the din, but from State officials and other prominent persons, Mrs. Rice, in 1906, organized the Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise, of which she has ever since been the president. Among those who officially associated themselves with her in this organization were Mark Twain, Richard Watson Gilder, William Dean Howells, John Bassett Moore, the superior general of the Paulist Fathers, the commissioner of health, the president of the Academy of Medicine, and the presidents of all the colleges in New York. Later Cardinal Farley and Bishop Greer added their support and more recently the governors of forty States have consented to form a board of honorary vice-presidents and have enthusiastically indorsed the work. One of the first evils against which the society directed itself was the needless street noises in the neighborhood of city hospitals. Investigation had already proven that hundreds of patients were not only discomforted by the noise, but that in many cases health was actually endangered by it. To the campaign directed against this evil the press gave an immediate and hearty support, not only in its news columns, but by editorial expression. This gave the society another force of allies; the publicity awakened the principals and teachers of the public schools, who stated that the street noises compelled them to keep closed the windows of the schools during class hours, which resulted in bad ventilation. One petition which Mrs. Rice sent out for signatures was signed by 9,000 principals and teachers within eight days. By this time the efforts of Mrs. Rice and the society had developed a genuinely popular movement, and as a result the city board of aldermen passed unanimously the “Hospital Zone Ordinance,” which gave the borough presidents the authority to place notices on the street corners near hospitals warning teamsters and pedestrians against making unnecessary noises. Not long afterward the “School Zone Ordinance” was also passed. A phase of this work was the formation of the Children's Hospital Branch of the Society, of which Mark Twain was the president. The object of this junior organization was to stop the most prolific source of street noises: the boisterousness of children. Not wishing to do this by force or by causing arrests, Mrs. Rice conceived of appealing directly to the children themselves, with remarkable results. The response was immediate and effective. The children enrolled in the society in vast numbers, wearing the buttons as badges of their membership, and not only ceased making the noises themselves, but restrained the younger children. Within three weeks, after visiting most of the schools and addressing the children herself, Mrs. Rice had secured 20,000 members of the junior league. The success of this effort suggested a campaign against another and a still greater evil, the old-fashioned way of celebrating the Fourth of July. Here another element more harmful than noise entered into the situation. By comparing statistics with the official accounts of historians, Mrs. Rice showed that the Fourth of July celebrations within a few recent years had caused more deaths and injuries, most of them among children, than there had been casualties during the principal battles of the War for Independence. So the society of which she was the head launched its movement for a “sane Fourth of July celebration,” an expression which has since become familiar throughout the whole country and has been universally heeded, not only by individuals, but by thousands of municipalities, large and small. Largely through these efforts, it may now be said that the old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration, by means of explosive toys, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. It is especially worthy of mention that in this latter movement Mrs. Rice has had large support from the children themselves. Out of the many thousands of children with whom she talked in the schools, only three declared that fireworks and firecrackers were more alluring than other forms of amusements; the others all preferred celebrating the birthday of the nation with sports, games, picnics, and outings. More lately the society has also begun a propaganda against the noises of automobiles in the city streets, and this is developing with the same satisfactory results. As must be obvious from even so brief a sketch of Mrs. Rice's activities, she is possessed of an unlimited, almost untiring energy. With this quality she combines a deep sense of her obligations as a unit of society as a whole; her “social sense,” as it is termed by the sociologists, is unusually developed. She also possesses a rare executive ability which has enabled her to make excellent use of the forces at her disposal in attacking the evils against whose suppression she has made so much progress. It is her contention, as she has made plain in the various magazine articles she has written on the subject, that there is a deeper significance behind the noise so characteristic of our city life and our mode of celebrating various holidays, and especially the Fourth of July, than the discomfort or danger it causes. Our noisy demonstrations of patriotism merely indicate a still undeveloped culture; as we grow our demonstrations will become less noisy as our feelings become more profound; that ours are still the “rough ways of a young world till now.” In 1916 Mrs. Rice presented to the municipality of Brooklyn a gate and fountain, to be erected at the entrance of the Betsey Head Playground, in Brownsville, as a memorial to her husband, Isaac L. Rice. The fountain comprises a group representing children and seals sporting in the water. The sculptor is Louis St. Lanne. On 12 Dec., 1885, Mrs. Rice married Isaac L. Rice, a prominent New York lawyer. They had six children: Isaac L., Jr., Julian, Muriel, Dorothy, Marion, and Marjorie Rice.
