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Most laymen working to help the deaf are themselves hard of hearing. They include Starling Winston Childs, Manhattan banker; Adolph Bloch, Manhattan corporation lawyer; Norman Fraser, Chicago, retired; Mr. Justice A. Rives Hall, Montreal; Judge Simon Bass, St. Louis; Mrs. James Flack Norris, Boston; Mrs. James Rudolph Garfield, Cleveland daughter-in-law of the late President, wife of the 1907-09 Secretary of Interior. Also a worker for deaf people, though not herself aurally inefficient, is Mrs. Calvin Coolidge.
A great maker of hearing aids is Western Electric, which commercializes the research of Bell telephone laboratories. Director of Bell laboratories' acoustical research is Dr. Harvey Fletcher, last week re-elected president of the A. F. O. H. H. At their banquet he ran telephone wires from microphones on the speakers' platform to headsets for each of the hard of hearing.
Another great maker of such devices, and a great friend of the hard of hearing, is George Barton French, railroad authority once affiliated with the Export Department of J. P. Morgan & Co. His devices are small and portable. He sells them cheaply, will sell them more cheaply when he makes them in greater quantities. With one of his devices the speaker places the transmitter against any part of his head or throat; ensuing sounds are louder than if he spoke into the transmitter. A deaf person can put the receiver to any part of his skull or spine, and hear perfectly through his bones.
*Until lip-readers complained, silent cinemactors were wont to mouth irrelevancies, vulgarities, even Hollywood obscenities before the camera.