The Road to Freedom
but gain the world for all the workers, a world fit for men and women to live their lives in freedom of love and labor.
Our opponents may say that this would be "expropriation," but we will let the poet reply for us:
THE CRY OF TOIL.
We have fed you all for a thousand years,
And you hail us till unfed,
Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the worker's dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest,
And you lie on a crimson wool.
For if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God, we ha' paid it in full.
There's never a mine blown skyward now
But we're buried alive for you.
There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your accursed wealth,
Good God, we ha' paid it in full.
We have fed you all for a thousand years,
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike of a week ago,
You ha' eaten our lives and our babes and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share,
But if the blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God, we ha' bought it fair.
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