Battleships Built to Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 131, 26 December 1941, Page 12

Battleships Built to Music

cows at milking-time, and the girls when they are dipping the chocolates. But it has not been suggested before that it will build battleships, though it apparently will. Here is a _ recent editorial from the New York Times: "The 35,000-ton battleship Alabama, under construction at the Norfolk Navy Yard, is being built to music. There are six concerts daily from phonograph records played through an amplifying system, four during the shifts, and two at lunch time. The music is described as *sweet and swing, classic and corny.’ Its effect on the workers is thought to be good. Naturally this news, which is not concealed even from the Nazis and may be causing them anxiety, sets us thinking about precedents. ik is known that music helps the "First and last, a great_ many buildings must have been put up to music, Solomon’s Temple and the Cathedral of Chartres among them. The sound of building operations may be music in itself, though some prefer the melody of hammer and saw to

that of the riveter. The best things ‘that men do, including both work and worship, demand music. Folksongs would be poor if it weren’t for sowing, harvesting, hauling, loading and unloading, blacksmithing, carrying burdens, raising anchors, making sail, and so forth.’ The best artisans whistle. It would, of course, be better if the music came out of the builders of the Alabama instead of having to be put into them by loudspeakers. But perhaps if enough music is put into them some music will come out. Perhaps they will get to whistling, humming and singing that ‘sweet, swing, classic and corny music’ they are hearing. The effect upon the Alabama herself may be something that couldn’t be expressed in blueprints. A_ battleship whose beams and plates are vibrating not only with the usual strains and tensions’ of the sea but with the eloquent remembered saxophone, the loud cornet, the boastful trumpet, and the arrogant echo of drums, might be formidable indeed. One may well follow expectantly the coming sea-dance of the’ Alabama."