Plea Of The Laborer

Leave me alone, I want no fight,

     The fight is all gone out o’ me!

I’ve swung so long with this good right

     Arm that I’m sort o’ stilted, see?

O, yes, I know your argument,

     It is the same old dismal tale;

Starvation wage, and discontent,

     And wife and child weak and pale.

God knows it’s true enough, but I

     Have learned my lesson but too well;

Yes, the half loaf that you decry

     Is better’n none, for none is hell,

So don’t ask me to vacate here

     I’ve been all through that sort of thing;

I’ve paid the price, the price was dear,

     And even now I feel the sting.

Leave me alone, that’s all I ask,

     And plead with them who’ve yet to learn;

Leave me to hammer out my task

     And take whatever wage I earn.

‘Tis small enough, aye, right you are

     But certainty sometimes is well;

The half-loaf’s better’n none by far,

     For none, I tell you, man, is hell!

Jan. 12, 1914