Dan Pearlman wrote:

"I am amused to recall an instance of his total insensitivity to the
workingman.  Sometime in the 20s he offered the suggestion that
music be piped in to the factory floor to enable the worker to be
more productive by reducing the monotony of his job.  (He was his
own sort of Taylorite!)"

Forgive my iggurrance, but I don't know what a Taylorite is. However, as
chance would have it, within a few hours of reading this post I found myself
reading an interview with Geoffrey Hill in the Spring 2000 issue of the
Paris Review. Hill reminisces about "being a child in Britain during the
Second World War, when the radio was the focus, the sound-hearth, of the
house. When I look back, the radio programs seem to have been equally
divided between regular news reports, comedies and light music, which was
deliberately designed to be relayed to workers in munitions factories and
other industries - I think the program was called something like 'Music
While You Work'".

I'm not sure I agree that the idea of playing music in factories shows
insensitivity to the work force, but even if it does, Pound's support for it
is not an instance of his demonstrating his mad-dog fascist poet
credentials; he shared his idea with the well-meaning if (in those days)
"elitist" BBC.

When I used to do factory work during school vacations in the 1980s, there
was always music playing. On balance I am sure that my workmates and I would
have disliked the work more without the music. I particularly recall the
effect Madonna's "Like a Virgin" had on our movements as we worked; the
whole production line would break spontaneously into a kind of dance
whenever that particular number came on.

Of course you could say the music was being used as a kind of "opium of the
masses"; but if you're that way inclined you could say that about any
improvement in working conditions.

Richard Edwards

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