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226 One of the clearest notes of our time is the recognition of the holiness of industry and the attempt to formulate the morals of it.6 We accept this fact indirectly by the modern endeavor to give the laboring man his due. The handworker is more or less elemental, dealing directly with the materials . We begin to recognize these industries in literature, in sculpture, and in painting; but we do not yet very consciously or effectively translate them into music. It is to be recognized, of course, that melody is emotional and dynamic not imitative, that its power lies in suggestion rather than in direct representation , and that its language is general; with all this I have nothing to do. [Georges] Meunier has done much with his chisel to interpret the spirit of constructive labor and to develop its higher significance. His art is indeed concrete and static, and sculpture and music are not to be compared; yet it raises the question whether there may be other bold extensions of art. The primitive industries must have been mostly silent, when there were no iron tools, when fire felled the forest tree and hollowed the canoe, when the parts in construction were secured by thongs, and when the game was caught in silent traps or by the swift noiseless arrow and spear. Even at the Stone Age the rude implements and the materials must have been mostly devoid of resonance. But now industry has become universal and complex, and it has also become noisy, so noisy that we organize to protect ourselves from becoming distraught. And yet a workshop, particularly if it works in metal, is replete with tones that are essentially musical. Workmen respond readily to unison. There are melodies that arise from certain kinds of labor. Much of our labor is rhythmic . In any factory driven by power there is a fundamental rhythm and motion , tying all things together. I have often thought, standing at the threshold The Tones of Industry 6. From The Holy Earth (New York: Scribner, 1915), 120–123. “The Tones of Industry” 227 of a mill, that it might be possible somewhere by careful forethought to eliminate the clatter and so to organize the work as to develop a better expression in labor. Very much do we need to make industry vocal. It is worth considering, also, whether it is possible to take over into music any of these sounds of industry in a new way, that they may be given meanings they do not now possess. In all events, the poetic element in industry is capable of great development and of progressive interpretation; and poetry is scarcely to be disassociated from sound. All good work well-done is essentially poetic to the sensitive mind; and when the work is the rhythm of many men acting in unison, the poetry has voice. The striking of the rivet The purr of a drill The crash of a steam shovel The plunge of a dredge The buzz of a saw The roll of belts and chains The whirl of spindles The hiss of steam The tip-tap of valves The undertone rumble of a mill The silent intent of men at work The talk of men going to their homes: These are all the notes of great symphonies. Nor should I stop with the industries of commerce and manufacture. There are many possibilities in the sounds and voices that are known of fisherfolk and campers and foresters and farmers. Somehow we should be able to individualize these voices and to give them an artistic expression in some kind of human composition. There are rich suggestions in the voices of the farmyard, the calls of wild creatures, the tones of farm implements and machinery, the sound of the elements, and particularly in the relations of all these to the pauses, the silences, and the distances beyond. Whether it is possible to utilize any of these tones and voices artistically is not for a layman to say; but the layman may express the need that he feels. ...

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