A couple of years ago there was a discussion on this list of factory music
and Pound's sensitivity or insensitivity to the working man. The relevant
postings can be found in the archive (http://lists.maine.edu); their
subject lines were "music while you work" and "factory music'.

I simply want to append to that discussion the following quotation from
"Machine Art" (which is reprinted in Machine Art & Other Writings, the lost
thought of the Italian years, ed. Maria Luisa Ardizzone, Duke Univ. Press
1996):

   "The harmonization would consist (1) in bringing the different
percussive speeds of the machinery into some regular proportion, where
possible; (2) in establishing some proportion between the uninterrupted
duration of the noises.
[...]
.. that a use of these recurrences  in proportion to each other will have
some effect on human nerves; and that it can be combined with 'higher'
recurrences known as notes, and that the resulting disturbance of the
atmosphere may even 'give pleasure' or at any rate be less nerve racking
and wearing than wholly unorganized clatter."

Tim Romano