Music While You Work

The second movement of Beethoven's Ninth is just the right rhythm for polishing the 'furniture; the second movement of his Fifth is a mopping-the-kitchen-floor rhythm. Siegfried Idyll makes picking mud up from the children's boots not irksome in the least.

So wrote a housewife in Arlington, Va. She had learned, as had thousands of other workers in the home, what U.S. industry is beginning to find out: that music on the job gets the job done better.

Some 500 factories, arsenals and shipyards are now wired for sound. From a studio or office, phonograph records are played over a system of loudspeakers. Other firms engage bands, encourage employe musical groups. In England, where nearly every factory plays music to its workers, surveys have shown a 6% to 11% increase in production directly traceable to sweet sounds.

Most U.S. plants restrict concerts to lunch periods and between shifts, but in many a factory tunes penetrate the clatter of machinery. When the battleship Alabama slid off the ways at the Norfolk Navy Yard, she had become known as "the rhythm ship'' because her welders, riveters and fitters were spurred on by recorded music ranging from symphonies to boogie-woogie. In Botany Worsted Mills' vast Passaic, N.J. plant (khaki for uniforms), light melodies rise above the din of weaving machines and shuttles for periods of five to 25 minutes, six times a day.

Most U.S. installations are recent. Picatinny Arsenal, Dover, N.J., piped music through its sewing-machine building last fall. Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego began broadcasting lunchtime entertainment to its 39,000 workers in December. Last week the Brooklyn Navy Yard put into use a newly installed sound system. This week Todd Shipyards Corp. began noon-hour dance-band concerts in its Brooklyn and Hoboken yards.

Most popular, and most played, are the tunes of the hour. Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Kay Kyser, Bing Crosby rate high. When Consolidated Aircraft Corp. tried heavy classics on its programs, workers hooted. But Portland's huge Oregon Shipbuilding Yard draws no complaints when it goes as high as Brahms' Fifth and Sixth Hungarian Dances.

R.C.A. is the biggest purveyor of music to industrial plants. Next is Muzak, which has long supplied musical transcriptions (by private wire) to restaurants, hotels, apartments. Muzak pipes programs to some firms, also offers installations ($900 and up) which are intended for Muzak's "high-fidelity" transcription discs. Cost of Muzak service: $50 a month. R.C.A. likewise installs turntables, pickups and loudspeakers, supplies record libraries for fees ranging from $250 to $40,000. Records are supplied monthly, in batches of 20 or more, for $8.50 up.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.