New York City's Street Music Ban

Section II: Recreation
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ROBERT HAWKINS
“Industry Cannot Go On without the Production of

Some Noise”: New York City's Street Music Ban and
the Sound of Work in the New Deal Era
Winner of the 2011 JSH Student Essay Competition
Abstract
This study details New York City's Depression-era street music ban
and concurrent noise abatement campaign to reveal the relationship of
changing definitions of work with sound. New York had issued street
music licenses for a fee, but Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia put an end to
the practice. While some have assumed LaGuardia banned street music
to combat Italian stereotypes associated with organ grinders, this essay
demonstrates that efforts to reconcile changing social policy with the
work ethic motivated both LaGuardia's ban and public resistance to it.
Street musicians occupied an ambiguous space between begging and
self-employment and, as relief programs provoked public concern over
economic individualism, confusion between honest unemployment and
willful dependency was a political liability for the Mayor. Yet, while
the Mayor condemned busking as begging, citizens sprang to street
music's defense, arguing the ban would force practitioners onto the
relief rolls; while municipal policy proclaimed street music was no
longer work, some New Yorkers suddenly believed the opposite.
Simultaneously, LaGuardia launched an antinoise campaign that eval-
uated sounds on the basis of economic necessity. Noises essential to
work were moderated while “unnecessary” noises were silenced.
Author's note: I am grateful for feedback from Susanne Wiedemann, Ben Looker, Alex
Russo, the Journal of Social History's anonymous readers, and peers who commented on
my work at annual conferences of The Space Between Society and the American Studies
Association. I am also thankful for research support through a Brennan Award from Saint
Louis University and to that institution's Department of American Studies, which
nurtured this project. Finally, I am indebted to Amanda Key, Meg Key, and Omar Zaki
for opening their homes to me during my research travel, and to my wife, Lynn
Fingerhut, for her love and tolerance. Address correspondence to: Robert Hawkins,
Department of History, Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois 61625. rlhawkins@bradley.edu.
Journal of Social History vol. 46 no. 1 (2012), pp. 106–123

doi:10.1093/jsh/shs025
© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
New York City's Street Music Ban and the Sound of Work 107
Redefined as beggars under LaGuardia's ban, street musicians lost

their claim to legitimacy and became vulnerable to noise ordinances.
Citizens protesting that street music was necessary work, preferable to

accepting relief, also insisted it was not noise. Consequently, this study
argues that new commitments to the well-being of unemployed citizens
prompted New Yorkers to reexamine definitions of work, reevaluate
which noises were necessary, and hear street music differently.
In April, 1935, Sebastino Lupica stormed into New York's City Hall, took out
his accordion, and launched into a performance of Italian Opera. Officials came
and stood in the hallway, perplexed but listening attentively, and applauded
loudly when he had finished. Under the impression that the city had refused to
renew his street music license because of doubts about his musical ability,
Lupica had come to lower Manhattan from his home in the Bronx to demon-
strate his skills in the hope that Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia might intercede on
his behalf. Agreeing that Lupica was a gifted musician, Police Captain Harten
phoned the License Department to ask why permission had been refused only to
discover that the Mayor himself had banned the licensing of street musicians;
once current permits expired, street music would be illegal in New York City.
Dejected and confused, Lupica left City Hall to join the burgeoning ranks of
the unemployed, wondering aloud how he would earn a living now that the
Mayor had criminalized his chosen profession.1 While Lupica had expected a
license to be granted or refused based on the sonic quality of his work, Mayor
LaGuardia had banned the practice in the belief that street music was an
unnecessary noise that failed to qualify as work in the first place.
Though neglected by historians, LaGuardia's street music ban generated a
great deal of comment in the 1930s, most of which centered on debates over the
proper role of government and the merits of self-sufficiency. Unfolding against
the backdrop of the Great Depression, the conflicts surrounding the ban drama-
tized the tension between the creation of a social safety net via New Deal relief
policies and the value many citizens continued to place on economic individu-
alism. Yet, scholars have barely noticed the ban, treating it as a footnote to a
well-covered period in the city's history. Furthermore, what mention it has
received has propagated two misconceptions: first, that LaGuardia's ban was spe-
cific to organ grinders and, second, that he initiated the policy to combat
Italian stereotypes associated with that profession. In fact, as accordionist
Sebastino Lupica's plight illustrates, the Mayor barred all forms of street music,
thereby criminalizing an entire mode of musical labor, not just the low-skilled
subset of organ grinders. The public's sentimental attitude toward organ grind-
ers, however, led to the policy being referred to simply as an organ grinding ban
and, in turn, left a misleading impression on the historical record. The notion
that discomfort over stereotypes motivated LaGuardia—which relies on the
assumption that the ban was limited to organ grinders in the first place—
derived mainly from the Mayor's autobiography, in which he explained that the
visit of an organ grinder to his childhood home prompted his young peers to
mock his Italian heritage. Robert Caro's claim that Parks Commissioner Robert
Moses slurred the Mayor by referring to him as “the little organ grinder” likely
added to this interpretation. While LaGuardia's papers are silent as to who, if
108 Journal of Social History Fall 2012
anyone, urged him to ban street music, his own statements are clear as to why
he adopted the policy. LaGuardia always cited his objection to begging, together
with the argument that street music was an anachronistic form of entertainment,

as the prime motivation for the ban. And, in contrast to many public comments
debating street music's work status, only a single letter to the Mayor expressed
concern for the practice's reflection on people of Italian extraction.2 Clearly,
the ban did not stem primarily from concern over ethnic stereotypes. Rather, as
this essay demonstrates, efforts to reconcile changing social policy with adher-
ence to the work ethic motivated both LaGuardia's ban and public resistance to
its implementation.
Although LaGuardia and his ban's detractors shared a belief in the value of
work, their respective understandings of what constituted work shifted in opposite
directions in response to economic crisis and government intervention. Faced
with defending the relief system and deflecting charges of radicalism, LaGuardia
redefined the work of street musicians as begging in order to clarify distinctions
between willing workers and willful dependents. Almost simultaneously, buskers
became vulnerable to the Mayor's noise abatement campaign, which made work
a basis for distinguishing necessary noise from unnecessary clamor. Yet, even as
LaGuardia reversed the municipal government's established practice of licensing
street music, concern over joblessness and the cost of relief spurred a populace
that had long complained about noisy musical “beggars” to change its tune and
reconsider the work status of street musicians.3 Consequently, this study argues
that new commitments to the well-being of unemployed citizens prompted
New Yorkers to reexamine their definitions of work, reevaluate which noises
were necessary, and, indeed, to hear street music a bit differently. On these shift-
ing perceptions turned the political viability of progressive policy, the sonic
organization of the city's public space, and the very livelihood of its itinerant
performers.
While LaGuardia's street music ban and concurrent noise abatement cam-
paign were separate policies, both bore the marks of efforts to apply government
management to the formalization of work, the maintenance of orderly public
space, and the goal of modernization. The busking ban favored clear streets and
an aesthetic of economic modernity by seeking to channel itinerant performers
into other occupations or the relief system. The antinoise campaign extended
similar ideals explicitly into the sonic sphere. Seeking to foster an orderly urban
soundscape without compromising trade and industry, the campaign judged
noises on their perceived “necessity,” a subjective criterion previously used
elsewhere.4 In the context of the Depression, however, this concept had a more
intensely economic ring to it. Consequently, the discourse on noise, carried on
under the rubric of “necessity,” overlapped the discourse on work, though the
two were seldom seamlessly unified. New Yorkers confused issues of work and
noise as they applied disparate ideological perspectives to their interpretations of
sound, a phenomenon that was especially pronounced with respect to street
music. While the ban addressed the question of whether buskers were working
or begging, and actually narrowly preceded the antinoise campaign, some clearly
believed noise concerns motivated the policy. Indeed, citizens' contradictory
reactions to the ban, expressed in letters to the Mayor, alternately grounded
their arguments in beliefs about work, in definitions of noise, or both. Given
the history of the city's approaches to street music, however, this was not terribly
surprising. Nor was it coincidental that the issue gained new prominence in the
context of the New Deal.
In debating street music, New Yorkers' concerns over work and noise had

grown up together. As historian Dave Russell has noted, the ranks of street
musicians have included, alongside accomplished professionals, “sad figures for
whom possession of a musical instrument was merely a thin veil for mendi-
cancy”; consequently, complaints about the noise street musicians generated
often appeared in conjunction with confusion over their ambiguous work
status.5 Even before the 1898 consolidation of the boroughs, New Yorkers were
condemning the tolerance afforded to musical “beggars” and complaining that
noisy itinerants were “an intolerable nuisance” that the public “must endure […]
with a mere mockery of redress.” 6 By the turn of the century, the Board of
Aldermen considered ordinances against music in the streets, heard counterin-
tuitive demands that the plague of unlicensed musicians be met by eradicating
licensing, and evidenced developing trends in the evaluation of sound when an
alderman asserted that “the organ grinder is not a necessity and should go.”7
The new century brought stricter enforcement of noise ordinances.
New Yorkers' complaints about being disturbed even resulted in a law granting
citizens who “don't like the noise” the right to banish organ grinders to a dis-
tance of 250 feet.8 Yet, despite objections, the city continued to license buskers
and added to the municipal coffers by auctioning off the right to perform on the
Staten Island ferries.9 Street musicians' treatment under antibegging laws was
similarly confused. Though New York took mendicancy seriously—indeed,
night courts were largely occupied with the prosecution of vagrancy and disor-
derly conduct—it was unclear whether street musicians fell within statutory lan-
guage criminalizing anyone who “places himself in the streets, highways,
passages, or other public places, to beg or receive alms.”10 Though some
appeared before magistrates on charges of begging, decisions were inconclusive
and tended to muddle rather than clarify buskers' occupation of an ambiguous
legal status between vagrancy and self employment.11 With the advent of the
New Deal, however, such ambiguities ceased to be a luxury that the city govern-
ment could afford.
Before the Depression, belief in economic individualism was widespread.
National ideology proclaimed that adherence to the work ethic yielded financial
reward, independence, and personal worth, while its neglect brought failure and
stigma. In the wake of economic collapse, however, with unemployment nearing
25%, the rewards of hard work appeared less reliable and failure became a poor
indicator of which individuals had not applied themselves.12 With the
Emergency Relief and Construction Act (1932), the Unemployment Relief/Public
Works Act (1933), and the Federal Emergency Relief Act (1933), legislators
created a governmental responsibility to provide work and aid the unemployed.
Similarly, after the creation of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) under
the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act (1935), the Federal Music Project (FMP)
provided work for unemployed musicians, funding symphony orchestras that per-
formed free outdoor concerts for the public. Yet, as New York City became a
laboratory for nascent New Deal policy, public confidence in the economy was
so low that some New Yorkers applied for assistance in advance of job losses
they believed were sure to come. As relief expenses increased and tax revenues
fell, social welfare programs brought with them a greater urgency in
distinguishing men who had failed through no fault of their own from those
seeking to subsist off others.13
The public's concern over differentiating social parasites from “real” unem-

ployed workers had a significant political impact. In the FMP, this distinction
was mirrored by director Nicolai Sokoloff's preference for musically-literate clas-
sical musicians over popular performers who played by ear, as well as his firing of
anyone who might expose the project to scrutiny for harboring radicals—a con-
stant worry for New Dealers.14 LaGuardia, who broke with fellow Republicans
to support the Roosevelt administration and had joined the Socialist Party when
the G.O.P. denied him support in the 1924 congressional elections, faced
similar pressures. With the fear of dependency on the rise, the Mayor became a
prime target of critics who accused New Deal liberals of advocating collectivism
and undermining the work ethic.15 Hoping to deflect such accusations and
avoid alienating the city's staunchly anti-Communist Catholic voters,
LaGuardia took pains to demonstrate that relief funds reached honest unem-
ployed workers rather than professional loafers.16 As determining who deserved
relief became a pressing concern, any confusion of willing workers with disrup-
tive dependents became a political liability—and few practices complicated that
distinction more than street music.
Taking office in 1934, Mayor LaGuardia's objectives included the
establishment of an effective relief system and the remaking of New York into a
metropolis that was efficient and aesthetically modern.17 A proponent of the
work ethic, LaGuardia reconciled relief programs with economic individualism
by drawing a sharp moral distinction between government assistance, which he
characterized as an entitlement of citizenship, and begging.18 Unemployed citi-
zens could, from LaGuardia's perspective, dissociate themselves from willful
dependency by passing through a bureaucracy charged with weeding out those
who refused work. Thus, relief would function as a safety net for the work ethic,
not a way around it. As Mayor, he incorporated this distinction into his policies,
championing New Deal programs while seeking to rid the city of unmanaged,
marginal laborers—such as street musicians, day porters, and pushcart vendors—
whose presence might call the city's handling of economic crisis into question.19
Like pushcarts, street musicians were consistent neither with the administration's
urban aesthetics nor its goal of combating street congestion to facilitate the flow
of commercial traffic. And, like street peddlers, buskers were subjects of com-
plaints by those who argued that more staid forms of work were hampered by
informal laborers. Yet, even compared to pushcart peddlers, street musicians
endured a unique fate. While the administration contained pushcarts spatially,
sequestering them within enclosed markets, street music suffered a complete ban
as a result of its implications for relief.20 As irregular and antimodern as pushcart
vending may have seemed, few observers perceived it as begging. Musicians per-
forming on the street, on the other hand, blurred such distinctions. Were they
trying to work, or trying to avoid work? The confusion simultaneously cast doubt
upon the effectiveness of relief and, by evidencing unmanaged poverty and infor-
mal labor, compromised the city's facade of social modernization as well.
For LaGuardia, the prescription that citizens adhere to the work ethic was
not only a political and economic imperative, but an aesthetic standard.
This correlation was particularly apparent in his efforts to manage the urban
soundscape.21 Attempts to control noise in the urban centers of the United
States and Europe focused primarily on the honking of automobile horns in the
1930s and New York was no exception. Indeed, LaGuardia's antinoise campaign
produced the unfortunate slogan, “A noiseless auto is as pleasant as a speechless

mother-in-law.”22 Yet, further examination reveals concern with work as a
powerful undercurrent defining LaGuardia's endeavor and indicates that his
noise abatement program further eroded the position of itinerant musicians.
Explaining that “industry cannot go on without the production of some noise,”
LaGuardia reassured city residents that a connection to work would be the crite-
rion for distinguishing “necessary” noise from disruptive clamor; productivity
would not be interrupted during economic crisis. Launched amid debate over
the busking ban, LaGuardia's campaign relied on similarly narrow understand-
ings of what counted as work to those that informed the decision to eliminate
performance licenses. The city would suffer the “necessary” sounds of clinking
garbage cans, clattering milk trucks, and roaring industrial machinery so long as
laborers took reasonable steps to moderate their noise. Honking horns, blaring
radios, music spilling out of dance halls, and the loud conversation of night
workers, on the other hand, would not be tolerated.23 As this list indicates, the
determination of which noises emanated from work was somewhat subjective;
dance hall music, the speech of workers, and even the honking of horns might
sometimes have resulted from labor. Yet, LaGuardia did make unprecedented
efforts to bring as many occupations as possible into compliance. Consciously
breaking with the class condescension and intellectual elitism of past campaigns,
the city enlisted the aid of working citizens by circulating noise abatement
pledge cards—particularly to cab drivers, whose licenses were conditional on
signing—and altering the manner in which it communicated noise intensity to
the public.24 While the decibel was becoming a familiar unit to New Yorkers,
the city ranked its “noisiest” boroughs not on the basis of decibel levels but on
the number of citations police gave for unnecessary noise.25 In contrast to meas-
uring noise levels, counting incidences of unnecessary noise effectively quanti-
fied deviation from responsible industrious activity, suggesting that the
administration saw the goal of a quieter city as inextricable from and secondary
to the goal of a city that sounded busy. Work, conscientiously discharged, was
an aesthetic guiding management of the urban soundscape. As Noise
Commissioner Henry Curran explained to fellow urbanites, “The greatest indict-
ment of our lazy good nature […] lies in the noises of New York.”26
If LaGuardia sought a municipality that sounded industrious, efficient, and
modern, then street musicians impeded his city plan. The spatial goal of free-
flowing commerce supporting modern work patterns, which led the administra-
tion to combat pushcarts, was simultaneously a sonic aim. Early twentieth
century noise abators not only viewed noise as inefficient, but understood it as a
byproduct of congested traffic squeezing through the streets, a perspective
reflected in city officials' condemnation of pedestrians who prompted the
honking of motorists by disobeying traffic signals.27 Street musicians, however,
were doubly guilty of such disruptions; not only did they increase clamor by
clogging the thoroughfares, but their very end was the production of sound.
From the administration's perspective, the status of those sounds as industrious
was highly suspect. While modern practices of scientific management included
using music to promote worker efficiency and the government recognized musi-
cians as workers by employing them under the FMP, these developments existed
alongside established trends toward perceiving street musicians as impediments

to work. Just as pushcarts hampered more staid forms of commerce by blocking
traffic, so the production of street music disturbed supposedly weightier

activities—particularly the intellectual labor of the middle classes.28 If street
music was work, in the administration's view it was not of a sort conducive to
commercial efficiency or the aesthetics of economic modernization.
The fate of street music was contingent not only on whether it was work,
but on the distinction between noise abatement and an outright ban. While
LaGuardia and his officials engaged in rhetoric condemning everything from
“tooting horns” to “caterwauling street singers,” the campaign's goal was to
reduce noise by silencing sounds when possible and reducing their volume when
not, all under the governing concept of necessity. No sounds were truly banned,
as such, though many were punished.29 Even in the antinoise ordinance, efforts
to specify sonic activities the city deemed “unnecessary”—blasting car horns
when not in motion, playing musical instruments, and discharging engine
exhaust—included subjective qualifying language; only when these noises were
“unreasonable,” “excessive,” “disturbing,” or, of course, “unnecessary” were they
to be penalized.30 Had street music maintained the legal ambiguity it enjoyed in
past decades, “necessity” might have extended to licensed practitioners. Like
other laborers, they could have moderated their volume, limited work to certain
hours, observed restricted areas of operation, or even signed pledges like those
required of cab drivers. The Mayor's order, however, removed any grounds for
interpretation; redefined as beggars under the ban, street musicians could not
bring their sounds into compliance.
The ban stripped away street music's veneer of legitimacy in the spring of
1935. As the city refused licenses and existing registrations expired, itinerant
musicians transitioned from self-employed performers to unemployed vagrants.
Rather than announcing the policy, LaGuardia ordered the ban covertly via
communication with License Commissioner Paul Moss, probably to avoid publi-
city that might prompt public outcry.31 The administration disguised the ban as
an act of compassion by transferring the application process from the License
Office to the Department of Welfare and allowing musicians to receive permits
free, provided they could “pass certain requirements”—a murky process that may
have led to Sebastino Lupica's expectation that his skills would be evaluated, as
was the practice in other cities.32 But the precipitous decrease in licenses
attracted attention, prompting The New York Times to inquire, “Has the demand
for permits actually declined or is it a new municipal policy?”33 As word spread,
LaGuardia began receiving petitions asking him “not to abolish hurdy gurdies
from the streets of New York.”34 By the time Lupica protested at City Hall in
April, the Mayor had been answering letters of dissent for a month in corre-
spondences that made the question of whether or not street musicians were
beggars their central issue. Letter after letter echoed the sentiments of Janette
Heslin, who insisted, “Hurdy-gurdy players are not beggars, not any more than
any person who holds a job is a beggar. They work and are paid for it by dona-
tions of an enjoying public.”35 Protesters grounded their objections in the eco-
nomic circumstances of the day, writing that they could not imagine “how the
organ grinders will find other employment.”36 Yet, LaGuardia stood firm.
Writing in his stock response, the Mayor explained that street musicians blocked
traffic, lured children into the streets, and were an outmoded form of
entertainment in a modern world blessed with radio, the phonograph, and free
concerts like those provided by the FMP. Advances in social policy, then, as
well as technology, were among those LaGuardia saw as rendering street music

obsolete. Finally, however, his most vehement objection was to the idea “that a
city like New York should license or give permission to any individual for public
begging.”37 As the last licenses expired, several organ grinders went on NBC
radio to plead that the Mayor reconsider; however, LaGuardia preempted their
appeal, reiterating in a press conference that “the organ grinder no longer fills a
needed want” and stating firmly “I'm not going to license begging.”38
Street musicians had their defenders, including the press, sentimental citi-
zens, and even former Metropolitan Opera singer Mary Lewis; however,
LaGuardia was not the only one who heard street music as indicative of
begging.39 The extent to which issues of noise and self-sufficiency were confused
in the minds of the public is evident in the words of Harry Weisburg, Chairman
of the Noise Abatement Committee Nottingham Association, who telegrammed
from Brooklyn with the following message of support for the Mayor:
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR DECISION REGARDING STREET

ORGANS WITH THE HOPE THAT 1936 WILL SEE THE FINISH OF
ALL MENDICANT MINSTRELS OF THE SIDEWALKS[,] SUBWAY
SOLICITATIONS OF ALLEGED VETERANS AND PERSISTENT
PESTERINGS OF PANHANDLERS AND HONKING OF DIE-HARD
MOTORISTS WHOSE BELIEF IN BLASTING IS HARD TO BLAST.40
For Weisburg, the annoyance caused by loud noises was apparently equaled only
by the sound of indigents asking for money—at any volume. Yet, his association
of the ban's campaign against alleged beggars with LaGuardia's larger project of
controlling urban noise points to an important consequence of the latter effort:
making economic necessity the gauge of noises' acceptability required author-
ities to differentiate between sounds that signaled an industrious working class
and those that emanated from disruptive or dependent elements, a determina-
tion that depended on who was listening. Just as vagrancy laws facilitated the
control of labor by granting police the power to subjectively determine who
lacked “visible means of support,” noise abatement gave officers great latitude in
determining who sounded busy, hardworking, and law-abiding.41 Indeed,
members of the Young Communist League complained that police used noise
abatement as an excuse to target their rallies and wrote to the Mayor to “protest
the sectarianism of [the] Anti-Noise Campaign” which, they claimed with appa-
rently unintentional irony, “smacks loudly of incipient fascism.”42 The Young
Communists' complaint—resonant with objections from the left over treatment
of the unemployed and the use of preventive arrests to curtail public protests—
speaks to the city's effort to rid public space of sounds as well as sights that
might call economic liberalism into further question by raising the specter of the
redistribution of wealth.43 To be sure, the performances of street musicians had
little in common with leftist rallies; however, as relief rolls swelled and buckled
under the strain of meeting demand with limited federal allocations, some
New Yorkers heard the slogans of radical activists and the pleas of the unem-
ployed for assistance very much as Harry Weisburg heard the solicitations of
hurdy-gurdy men: just more dependents asking for a handout.44
The public's reservations about dependency and government relief were a

constant concern for LaGuardia. Although he defended the rights of the unem-
ployed to protest, when his street music policy became public knowledge he was

unwavering in his assertion that itinerant musicians were beggars.45 His public
advocacy of the ban may well have been an effort to turn the story to his
advantage. If he crafted his responses with an ear toward distinguishing welfare
from begging or insulating the administration against charges of sanctioning
dependency, then they certainly came at an opportune time. In early 1936, as
LaGuardia began to publicly describe street music as begging, the federal govern-
ment slashed relief allocations. The cuts sparked protests and rioting by the
unemployed, which city welfare officials attributed to Communist agitators.46
William Randolph Hearst's New York American blamed the Mayor for the
unrest, headed its editorial page with the provocative question “New York
Under the Red Flag?” and asserted that relief offices were infested with radicals
who paid Communist Party dues out of public money. Dominating the page was
a cartoon depicting LaGuardia as Napoleon, hand tucked in his coat, and sur-
rounded by rioters carrying signs reading “Red Relief Workers,” “Hurrah for Red
Russia,” and “Down With Capital.”47 Pressure only increased over the next few
years as the Roosevelt Recession kept demands for relief high and political oppo-
nents charged LaGuardia's administration with radicalism, even suggesting his
appointee to the Municipal Civil Service Commission, Paul Kern, was a
member of the Soviet Secret Police.48 Struggling to support relief programs
without appearing to subsidize those who shunned employment, LaGuardia had
clear motive to use his refusal to tolerate the “begging” of street musicians as a
demonstration of his advocacy of the work ethic. The New Deal might be revi-
sing the relationship between the citizen and the state, but from LaGuardia's
perspective it was street music and similar panhandling, not relief programs, that
trumpeted a lapse in self-sufficiency.
If LaGuardia's ability to insulate himself against charges of radicalism could
be measured by ire on the left, his approaches to street music and government
assistance appeared to enjoy some success: the liberal publication The Nation
condemned the ban as a blot on the Mayor's progressive record, a petitioner
accused him of “going capitalist” by “turning down the hurdy gurdy men,” and
The Daily Worker opposed his policies on labor and unemployment as ardently
as the Hearst papers did.49 Yet, as relief programs faced budget shortfalls and the
unrest of the unemployed cast government efforts in an unflattering light, the
public's letters of complaint show that New Yorkers were beginning to hear
street music differently. While the Mayor repeatedly insisted that New York
would not condone begging, many were less concerned about the city tolerating
street musicians than about the possibility that public money might support
them once their licenses expired. One man wrote to the Mayor that putting
street musicians “out of business” would “simply […] increase the unemployment
situation.”50 A few weeks later, a letter signed “A CITIZEN” followed this line
of thinking to its predictable conclusion, observing “I've never seen an organ
grinder accepting pennies as though he thought they were his due and that is in
the spirit of the thing.” “If the owner of the hurdy-gurdy were forced onto the
relief roll,” the letter continued, “[…] that pleasant principle would be violated.
Everyone would contribute to his support [emphasis added].”51 The “pleasant prin-
ciple” which A CITIZEN invoked—that charity is voluntary and the indigent
must not expect financial support as a right—found expression in many letters,

especially as the relief crisis stoked fears of Communism in early 1936. Writing
against the ban, one man complained “I do not know what good this action

does other than to enable President Roosevelt to put more people on relief
[…].”52 In a letter to the New York Times, another protested that “the Mayor is
not well informed as to the meaning of the word ‘begging.’” “There are worse
forms of begging in New York,” he continued, “of which no notice is taken.
The organ grinder pays a tax, but all in all, and after all, the Mayor is a
liberal.”53 Apparently, the writer believed the Mayor and other New Dealers
were the real beggars. Similarly, a letter signed “Justice,” wondered why the
mayor had “deprived these very few organ grinders this way to earn a
simple living. Lord knows, they in a way earn it, and the money is given them
voluntarily, while your COMMUNITY CHEST robs people, literally, and
allowed to.”54 An evangelist even identified organ grinders as a force against
atheism and radicalism, writing that, while he had once been “a God-hating,
Christ-rejecting individual and an enemy to socity [sic] through my political
activities,” an organ grinder had converted him “from infidelity and anarchism
to faith in Jesus Christ.”55 Certainly, some objections were nonsensical;
however, as New Deal programs increased the likelihood that public money
would go to support New York's newly unemployed buskers, city residents had
increased incentive to believe that street music sounded more like legitimate
labor than like begging. As Edith Gates asked LaGuardia, “Why put them on
Relief? They are doing honest work.”56
LaGuardia's antinoise campaign, too, drew significant public input and
expanded the forum on street music. In early 1936, with licenses expired and
concerns rising over the ban's ramifications for strained relief rolls, city residents
weighed in on the place of street music in the thunderous urban soundscape in a
manner that often failed to accord with the Mayor's terms for defining noise.
While sympathetic listeners like Elsie Simrock pleaded that organ grinders
“never made much noise” and hard line noise abators like Harry Weisburg
cheered their demise, there were some who refused to accept a definition of
noise based solely on a given activity's volume or perceived economic
necessity.57 Indeed, many letters defended street music on different aesthetic
grounds, describing organ grinders as pleasant harbingers of spring, entertainers
of children, and comforters of the poor, elderly, and infirm.58 One anonymous
citizen, who claimed to live on the city's “noisiest corner” as a result of all the
motorized traffic, even characterized street musicians as “the one musical note in
the whole clang of N.Y. City.” Echoing the tendency of working people to ridi-
cule elite noise abators as effeminate, the complainant told the Mayor “I had
hoped you were a man and not a sissy.”59 Yet, despite these citizens' preference
for a program of sonic beautification over one of muted efficiency, economic
necessity remained the organizing principle of the campaign. Street music may
have been “the one musical note” punctuating the throaty roar of the metropo-
lis's race toward recovery, but from the Mayor's perspective it was neither a desir-
able nor an industrious tune.
As the Mayor's war on noise grew teeth, the inability of street musicians to
lay claim to work status made them doubly vulnerable. In April of 1936, when
the city stopped issuing warnings and adopted Alderman Murray Stand's anti-
noise ordinance, street performers who already risked arrest for begging faced
fines and imprisonment for noise violations as well.60 Within a month of the
law's passage, the conflation of legal understandings of noise and dependency
with respect to street music became evident when police arrested the sibling

organ grinding team of Rocco and Bassanio Pico—one for soliciting alms and
the other for violating the antinoise ordinance. Fortunately for the two brothers,
the presiding Magistrate refused to fine them; while police were apparently dili-
gent in apprehending buskers per LaGuardia's policy, the courts were sometimes
less willing to mete out punishment. Nonetheless, the best Magistrate Abeles
could do was hand down a suspended sentence, for, as he had explained to the
four-piece band he freed the week before, “the law is against you.”61 Conversely,
those who complained about street musicians were increasingly certain that
both the law and the prevailing definition of work were in their corner. When
Percy Magnus, President of the New York Board of Trade, wrote to object about
street musicians in the business district, he made industry central to his griev-
ance. Magnus griped that “a saxophone, accordion and a guitar” were disrupting
business in “literally hundreds of offices” and situated his plea in the context of
economic recovery by allusively reminding the Mayor “These are days when we
cannot afford to be disturbed.” Yet the Depression also presented a problem for
addressing the situation. As he explained to LaGuardia, Magnus did not relish
the narrative likely to arise from policemen swooping down upon destitute musi-
cians with the Board of Trade as complainant. Nonetheless, he asked the Mayor
to do something about these individuals “who are obviously violating the Anti
Noise Ordinance, who are really soliciting alms, and let the peace and quiet of
the office be only broken by the usual City noises.” With his complaint,
Magnus joined a long-established trend in bourgeois attitudes toward street
music; portraying it as outside the bounds of work, he also characterized it as an
impediment to the real work essential to dragging the city out of the economic
doldrums. LaGuardia replied to Magnus the next day, writing “You are abso-
lutely justified in complaining” and lamenting that his administration “had been
making very fine progress until the magistrates indulged in judicial outbursts to
encourage these itinerant musicians.” Yet, LaGuardia agreed that the appearance
of the Board of Trade as an official complainant would be ill advised; rather, he
suggested Magnus counter the “noise nuisance” of street musicians with a “quiet
telephone call” to the police, on whose discretion he implied Magnus might
rely.62
LaGuardia had good reason to avoid such potentially volatile incidents.
Assessments of what noises were necessary were not only subjective but medi-
ated by class divisions; as federal cutbacks sparked first more relief demonstra-
tions and then the Roosevelt Recession, negative publicity for LaGuardia's
street music policy had the potential to antagonize both advocates for the poor
and opponents of government relief by prompting the question necessary
from whose perspective? 63 Indeed, Adelaide Weinstock sought to appeal to
LaGuardia's progressive temperament by pleading that street musicians' “hold on
life is in any case, financially tenuous.” Convinced street performance was nec-
essary to the survival of marginal individuals, she was also certain in her assess-
ment that “It's not noise.”64 Similarly, citizens angered by the cost of relief had
their opinion that street music was necessary revalidated with each reported
arrest, as when organ grinder Joseph Costinori strayed too close to the Mayor's
residence and was apprehended on LaGuardia's personal order. “Came Mayor
LaGuardia and the antinoise ordinance and Joe's music was banned,” The
New York Times reported, and went on to relate that the former street musician
was now eligible for “$13 weekly relief.”65 Concern over poverty and joblessness

remained a pressing issue as the federal government's 1937 Unemployment
Census found New York City was home to over 500,000 unemployed citizens
while nearly 200,000 depended on emergency relief jobs. Likewise, estimates
that city relief funds for 1938 would fall more than $21,000,000 short of
demand meant objections over the cost were unlikely to subside anytime soon.66
Clearly, there was ample fuel to keep the fires burning in both camps of citizens
opposing LaGuardia's ban.
As the economic crisis dragged on and the Mayor faced increasing criticism
of the number of recipients on the rolls, he continually tried to answer his
detractors by distinguishing government aid from dependency. On at least one
occasion, he invoked the figure of the mendicant musician to bolster his argu-
ment. In 1939, the Mayor praised relief supervisors' efforts to deal sympatheti-
cally with the New Yorker who “through no fault of his own is without work”
and took the opportunity to reassure the public that the government was dili-
gent in separating the truly needy from lazy loafers. LaGuardia conceded that
some tried to game the system, but insisted “we are doing everything possible to
keep a check on recipients. Those on relief who turn down work offered to
them constitute a very small percentage […]. Where suitable employment is
offered, the family goes off the rolls.” Recalling the case of a street musician
arrested for begging, LaGuardia complained, “Every time one of these cases gets
into the papers I get from 20 to 150 letters, mostly abusive.” “I asked for a report
on this case and it showed that […] the man had been offered employment
above the prevailing rates; that he had refused it, and that the family had been
put off relief.”67 The Mayor's criticism of the street musician demonstrated his
refusal to sanction begging and defended the integrity of the relief system;
however, that same month the State Supreme Court heard the case of four
Brooklyn musicians who argued (unsuccessfully) that denying them permits
“prevented them from making a living and would force them on relief [emphasis
added].”68 A political cartoon from the era dramatized the situation in similar
terms, depicting LaGuardia listening from the window of City Hall as an organ
grinder plays “The Curse of an Aching Heart.” Spouting the lyric “You made
me what I am today, I hope you're satisfied,” the street organ blames the Mayor
for transforming self-sufficient men into beggars. Headed with the words
“HURDY GURDY GRINDERS IN PLEA FOR AID [emphasis added],” the
cartoon hints that street musicians will now rely on government assistance.69
New York's itinerant musicians were figures who threatened to call New Deal
policy and the effectiveness of the municipal government into question. As
LaGuardia's frustration over the constant letters of protest indicates, the refusal
of some citizens to hear street music as he did was an impediment to his goals of
efficient relief and a modern, busy-sounding metropolis.
Prompted by concerns over joblessness and government aid, New Yorkers'
objections to the street music ban presented efforts to manage government relief
and noise abatement with the same challenge of balancing participatory democ-
racy and scientific planning which defined attempts to guide the city's spatial
development.70 In many respects, LaGuardia's policies on street music were
enactments of the values of a society which, as Michel de Certeau wrote,
“cleans out of its streets […] everything that is parasitic on the rationality of
work.”71 In a context where what counted as work in the first place was in ques-
tion, however, the Mayor's idealized urban soundscape and approach to unem-

ployment were hardly embraced by everyone. Oddly, the conflict surrounding
street music prompted citizens who condemned social programs in the name of
economic individualism to join with advocates for the poor in defending mar-
ginal workers from a Mayor renowned for progressivism. City residents had pre-
viously thought of street musicians as beggars and noisy nuisances. But, as the
Depression lingered and the New Deal introduced unprecedented reforms, some
New Yorkers heard street music as an indictment of the failed economic system
or a last bastion against municipal debt and the redistribution of wealth. Of
course, no polls tracked perceptions of itinerant musicians and a lack of repeated
commentary from the same citizens makes it impossible to know whether there
were changes in the way specific individuals heard street music. Additionally,
the greater tendency of constituents to write elected officials in regard to policies
with which they disagree suggests that resistance to the ban may be somewhat
overrepresented in LaGuardia's papers and was, in any case, insufficient to
reverse his decision. Nonetheless, the volume and consistent content of the
letters, together with copious coverage in the press, speaks powerfully to devel-
oping trends toward perceiving street music as an embodiment either of struggle
in the face of economic collapse or of a waning commitment to self-sufficiency
brought on by government intervention. The changing socioeconomic relation-
ships among citizens that accompanied the New Deal also altered understand-
ings of what counted as work. Though Mayor LaGuardia acknowledged that
“industry cannot go on without the production of some noise,” questions as to
which noises were industrious and necessary made street musicians defining fea-
tures in competing visions of the urban soundscape, even as they became physi-
cally scarce. “Organ grinders are a symbol,” wrote Adelaide Weinstock to the
Mayor, “they represent something more eternal than their thin jangle of
tunes.”72 Exactly what that “something” was, however, depended on who was
listening.
Endnotes
1. “Accordion Strains Fail To Win Permit,” The New York Times, April 28, 1935.
2. LaGuardia's papers are well indexed and I have examined appropriate sections for
insight on his motivations; however, they are also voluminous and further research may
unearth additional information on this question. While scholars have not explicitly
argued for the ethnic stereotype interpretation, they have repeated the Mayor's childhood
encounter and brushed over the subject while repeating the assumption that ethnic sensi-
tivity was the motivation for the Mayor's policy. Fiorello H. LaGuardia, The Making of an
Insurgent, An Autobiography: 1882-1919 (1948; New York, 1961), 27; Robert Caro, The
Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York, 1975), 447; Thomas
Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York, 1989),
12, 117; Daniel Bluestone, “The Pushcart Evil” in The Landscape of Modernity: New York
City, 1900-1940, ed. David Ward and Olivier Zunz (Baltimore, 1997), 299-300; Federico
Mortati to LaGuardia, May 8, 1935. Reel 0149, Fiorello H. LaGuardia Papers, New York
City Municipal Archives (hereafter FHLGP).
3. “Street Music,” The New York Times, December 13, 1891.
4. Karin Bijsterveld, “The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age: Technology and
Symbolism of Sound in European and North American Noise Abatement Campaigns,
1900-40,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, ed. Michael Bull and Les Back (New York,

2003), 170.
5. Dave Russell, Popular Music in England, 1840-1914: A Social History. 2nd Edition
(Manchester, 1997), 74; “Street Music,” The New York Times, December 13, 1891; “War
on Street Music,” The New York Times, July 21, 1900, 12; Emily Thompson, The
Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America,
1900-1933 (Cambridge, 2002), 2-4; “Street Music,” The New York Times, April 1, 1916;
The Comic and the Queer in New York Ordinances,” The New York Times, July 1, 1923.
6. “Street Music,” 1891.
7. “War on Street Music”; Thompson, 2-4, 115-118, 124-125, 150.
8. “The Comic and the Queer in New York Ordinances.”
9. “LaGuardia Backs Hand-Organ Ban,” The New York Times, January 26, 1936; “Organ
Grinders to Go,” The New York Times, January 17, 1936; “Hurdy-Gurdy Fees Abolished
by Mayor,” The New York Times, March 8, 1935; Thompson, 124-125. These sources
indicate that spots to perform on the ferries could bring as much as $450 at auction and
earn the city $8,000 annually.
10. Anna M. Kross and Harold M. Grossman, “Magistrates' Courts of the City of
New York: History and Organization,” Brooklyn Law Review 7, no. 2 (December 1937):
133-179; New York Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 887 (1926).
11. Since docket books did not distinguish between different sorts of “begging,” press
accounts are the only detailed source speaking to musicians arrested as vagrants. The
story of James Williams, whose tin cup for receiving coins doubled as his musical instru-
ment, is especially instructive for understanding the effort to distinguish between street
performance and begging. Williams protested that “he was a musician and as such earned
his daily bread [emphasis mine].” He was found guilty, but released on suspended sentence.
“Street Music is Changing, But Lives on in the City,” The New York Times, November 7,
1926; “Music Played on Can Soothes Magistrate's Heart,” The New York Amsterdam
News, October 20, 1926; Docket Books of the Manhattan 10th District Men's Night
Court, Docket # 21372, October 11, 1926. Reel 47. Records of the Criminal Justice
System, Section 1, B, New York City Municipal Archives.
12. Frederick E. Hosen, ed. The Great Depression and the New Deal: Legislative Acts in
Their Entirety (1932-1933) and Statistical Economic Data (1926-1946) (Jefferson, 1992),
257. Unemployment peaked at 24.9% in 1933. It vacillated between 15% and 20%
during the latter half of the 1930s.
13. Hosen, 16, 59, 89; Carolyn Livingston, “The WPA Music Program as Exemplified in
the Career of Charles Faulkner Bryan,” Journal of Historical Research in Music Education 21,
no. 1 (October 1999): 4; Arthur R. Jarvis, “Philadelphia's Depression Orchestras:
Contrasts Between the WPA Civic Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra,
1935-1942,” Pennsylvania History 66, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 422, 426, 429; Thomas
Kessner, “Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Challenge of Democratic Planning,” in The
Landscape of Modernity: New York City, 1900-1940, ed. David Ward and Olivier Zunz
(Baltimore, 1997), 315, 321; Herbert Applebaum, The American Work Ethic and the
Changing Work Force: An Historical Perspective (Westport, 1998), xiv; Michael S. Kimmel,
Manhood in America: A Cultural History. 2nd edition (New York, 2006), 127-128, 132-134.
14. Livingston, 5-6; Kenneth J. Bindas, All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The
WPA's Federal Music Project and American Society, 1935-1939 (Knoxville, 1995), 5, 11.
15. Caro, 353, 355, 466, 471-474; Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of
Modern New York, 100-103, 117, 146-159, 386, 487.

16. Caro, 473.
17. Kessner, “Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Challenge of Democratic Planning,” 318.
18. LaGuardia already drew this distinction in the early stages of the Depression before
he became Mayor and it continued to shape his administration during the Second World
War. Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, 175; Dominic
Capeci, “From Different Liberal Perspectives: Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Adam Clayton
Powell, Jr., and Civil Rights in New York City, 1941-1943,” The Journal of Negro History
62, no. 2 (April 1977): 169-170.
19. On pushcart vendors: Bluestone, “The Pushcart Evil,” 293. On day porters:
LaGuardia to Moss, August 19, 1936; Moss to LaGuardia, August 21, 1936. Reel 0123,
FHLGP.
20. Bluestone, 287, 294-295; “Street Music,” 1916; Percy Magnus to LaGuardia, May 26,
1936. LaGuardia Papers, Subject Files 1934-1945, Reel 0149, NYCMA.
21. I am using the term “soundscape” in accordance with the definition theorized by
Emily Thompson, in which a soundscape is comprised of both the physical sonic environ-
ment and the culture constructed around perceiving and making sense of that environ-
ment. Thompson, 1.
22. Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound, 2-3, 91-136; List of suggested slogans for the Noise
Abatement Campaign, undated. Reel 0146, FHLGP.
23. “Noise Drive Goes On 24-Hour Basis,” The New York Times, November 1, 1935.
24. “Taxi Men To Sign Anti-Noise Pledge,” The New York Times, January 5, 1936; Noise
Abatement Campaign Pledge Cards; Memo from 24th Precinct Police Captain and
Accompanying Pledge Cards, March 26, 1936; Memo from Bronx Borough Commanding
Officer, undated; Memo from Deputy Inspector to Chief Inspector, November 15, 1935.
Reel 0148, FHLGP. The city's previous Noise Commission blamed noise on the working
classes and dissolved with researchers attributing their failures to the uncooperative atti-
tude of a public whose aid they had largely declined to enlist. See: Press release announc-
ing plan for noise abatement campaign, August 11, 1935. Reel 0146, FHLGP; “Noise
Drive Goes On 24-Hour Basis”; Thompson, 2-4, 157-158; Bijsterveld, “The Diabolical
Symphony of the Mechanical Age,” 176-177, 182-183.
25. Press release from the Mayor's Office detailing number of noise warnings, October 3,
1935. Reel 0148, FHLGP; “Noise Drive Goes On 24-Hour Basis.”
26. “Curran Calls New York Too Patient About Noise,” The New York Times,
September 15, 1935.
27. Bijsterveld, “The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age,” 171, 173; “Noise
Drive Goes On 24-Hour Basis.”
28. Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound, 82-84, 94-95; John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes
(Oxford, 2003), 41-81.
29. “A Damper On Noise Is Decreed By City,” The New York Times, August 18, 1935;
“Noise Drive Goes On 24-Hour Basis.”
30. Press release detailing Alderman Stand's noise ordinance, April 21, 1936. Reel 0148,
FHLGP.
31. While details of their correspondence do not appear in LaGuardia's papers, the
Mayor's orders to Moss with respect to the following year's effort to rid the city of day
porters likely mirrored the tactics employed against buskers. “Carry out the orders for a

while and see how it works out,” the Mayor instructed. “Do not advertise. Just do it dis-
creetly.” Moss agreed, writing that “the minute we tell anyone […] it will get in the
papers” and suggesting (as was done with musicians) that they allow current porters to
continue working “until the end of the year when the licenses expire […].” LaGuardia to
Moss, August 19, 1936 and Moss to LaGuardia, August 21, 1936. Reel 0123, FHLGP;
“Accordion Strains Fail To Win Permit”; “Sidelights of the Week,” The New York Times,
December 29, 1935.
32. Licensing on the basis of ability was long the practice in Boston. “Music Fit For
Boston Streets,” The New York Times, December 2, 1898.
33. “Hurdy-Gurdy Fees Abolished by Mayor,” The New York Times, March 8, 1935;
“Topics of the Times,” The New York Times, March 9, 1935.
34. Petitions against the street music ban, Reel 0149, FHLGP.
35. Janette Heslin to LaGuardia, April 3, 1935. See also: Marion Yates to LaGuardia,
April 8, 1935; Joan Hartley to LaGuardia, March 10, 1935; Mrs. Thomas Doe to
LaGuardia, March 16, 1935. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
36. Mrs. Arthur Kurtz to LaGuardia, March 8, 1935. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
37. LaGuardia to Adelaide Weinstock, June 18, 1937. Reel 0149, FHLGP. The letter
cited is a later example, but the Mayor was issuing the same stock response on the subject
as early as March of 1935 and it remained virtually unchanged in substance and content,
as perusal of the reel in question will indicate.
38. “LaGuardia Backs Hand-Organ Ban,” The New York Times, January 26, 1936; “Organ
Grinders to Go,” The New York Times, January 17, 1936; “Organ Grinders Will Go On
Radio to Fight Ban,” The New York Times, January 11, 1936; “Today On The Radio,”
The New York Times, January 13, 1936.
39. “Mary Lewis Joins Hurdy-Gurdy Plea,” The New York Times, January 23, 1936.
40. Harry Weisburg telegram to LaGuardia, dated January 17th, 1936. Reel 0149,
FHLGP.
41. New York Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 887 (1926).
42. Young Communist League to LaGuardia, dated October 24, 1935. Reel 0022,
FHLGP.
43. Harry A. Maurer, Executive Secretary of the New York City Division of the
American League Against War and Fascism, to LaGuardia, dated February 17, 1936;
Harry W. Lardler, of Local New York, Socialist Party, to LaGuardia, dated February 14,
1936. Reel 0022, FHLGP.
44. Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, 385.
45. Ibid, 385-386; LaGuardia to Adelaide Weinstock, June 18, 1937. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
46. “Organ Grinders to Go”; “LaGuardia Backs Hand-Organ Ban.” While LaGuardia had
for the better part of a year been referring to street music as begging in his stock responses
to letters protesting the ban it was only in early 1936 that he began to make these state-
ments generally to the press and the public.
47. “New York Under the Red Flag?,” The New York American, March 23, 1936.
48. On Socialism, allegations of Communism, support of New Deal, and difficulties with
other Republicans: Caro, The Power Broker, 353, 355, 466, 471-474; Kessner, Fiorello
H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, 100-103, 117, 146-159, 386, 487. On

LaGuardia's fear that charges of Communism would alienate Catholic voters: Caro, The
Power Broker, 473. On charges by Robert Moses and Father Coughlin against Paul Kern:
Caro, The Power Broker, 471-474. On relief demonstrations and the Roosevelt Recession:
Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, 385-386.
49. Untitled, The Nation, April 10, 1935, 403; Jennette Curtis to LaGuardia, April 11,
1935. Reel 0149, FHLGP; “Hearst Paints the Little Flower Red,” The Daily Worker,
March 31, 1936.
50. William Parsons to LaGuardia, March 12, 1935. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
51. A CITIZEN to LaGuardia, March 30, 1935. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
52. John Larkin to LaGuardia, dated January 3, 1936. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
53. “Letters to the Editor” The New York Times January 24, 1936.
54. Justice to LaGuardia, January 6, 1936. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
55. Rev. A.L. Weckeman to LaGuardia, January 20, 1936. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
56. Edith Gates to LaGuardia, undated. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
57. Elsie Simrock to LaGuardia, January 10, 1936; Harry Weisburg, telegram to
LaGuardia. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
58. Adelaide Weinstock to LaGuardia, June 15, 1937; Mrs. Thomas B. Doe
to LaGuardia, March 16, 1935; A CITIZEN to LaGuardia, March 30, 1935; John Larkin
to LaGuardia, January 3, 1936; John Van P. Torrey to LaGuardia, March 18, 1935.
Reel 0149, FHLGP.
59. Unsigned to LaGuardia, January 3, 1936. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
60. Press release announcing initial plans for noise abatement campaign, August 11,
1935. Reel 0146, FHLGP; Proclamation of Noise Abatement Campaign for Overnight
Hours, September 30, 1935. Reel 0148, FHLGP; Press releases detailing the content,
progress, and ultimate adoption of Alderman Stand's noise ordinance, March 29, April 5,
and April 21, 1936. Reel 0148, FHLGP; “City Law To Punish The Noisy Drafted,” The
New York Times, March 29, 1936; “Mayor Signs Bill To Curb Noise Here,” The New York
Times, April 30, 1936. The punishment for violation was a fine of $1—increasing upon
repeated offenses to $2, $4, and $10—or imprisonment for an equal number of days.
61. “Hurdy-Gurdy Concert Endorsed By Court,” The New York Times, May 17, 1936;
“Street Musicians Freed,” The New York Times, May 9, 1936.
62. Percy Magnus to LaGuardia, May 26, 1936; LaGuardia to Magnus, May 27, 1936.
Reel 0149, FHLGP; Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound, 94-95; Picker, 41-81.
63. On class and noise: Thompson, 123. On relief riots and Roosevelt Recession:
Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, 386.
64. Adelaide Weinstock to LaGuardia, June 15, 1937. Reel 0149, FHLGP.
65. “Hurdy Gurdy Man Yields, Sells Organ,” The New York Times, June 15, 1937.
66. “Preliminary Report on Total and Partial Unemployment” November 16-20, 1937.
Reel 248, FHLGP; Memo detailing New York City's estimated relief funding shortfalls,
February, 1938. FHLGP, Reel 0029, FHLGP.
67. “Relief Critics Get Reply From Mayor,” The New York Times, November 11, 1939.
68. “Ruling Upholds City Ban On Street Musicians,” The New York Times,
November 30, 1939.
69. “Hurdy Gurdy Grinders in Plea for Aid,” undated cartoon, Reel 0149, FHLGP;

Henry Fink and AL. Piantadosi, The Curse of an Aching Heart. 1913. in “Peg O' My
Heart” and Other Favorite Song Hits, 1912 &1913, ed. Stanley Applebaum (New York:
Dover Publications, 1989), 16-19.
70. Kessner, “Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Challenge of Democratic Planning,” 325.
71. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984), 191.
72. Adelaide Weinstock to LaGuardia, June 15, 1937. Reel 0149, FHLGP.

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Section II: Recreation

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“Industry Cannot Go On without the Production of

Journal of Social History vol. 46 no. 1 (2012), pp. 106–123

Redefined as beggars under LaGuardia's ban, street musicians lost

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alongside established trends toward perceiving street musicians as impediments

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CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR DECISION REGARDING STREET

The public's reservations about dependency and government relief were a

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must not expect financial support as a right—found expression in many letters,

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