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 ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com