Then think of all our woe and want, O ye who hear this ditty! Our struggle vain for daily bread Hard hearts would move to pity. But pity's what you've never known,-- You'd take both skin and clothing, You cannibals, whose cruel deeds Fill all good men with loathing. OLD BAUMERT (_jumps up, beside himself with excitement_):--Both skin and clothing. It's true, it's all true! Here I stand, Robert Baumert, master-weaver of Kaschbach. Who can bring up anything against me?... I've been an honest, hard-working man all my life long, an' look at me now! What have I to show for it? Look at me! See what they've made of me! Stretched on the rack day after day. (_He holds out his arms._) Feel that! Skin and bone! "You villains all, you brood of hell!!" (_He sinks down on a chair, weeping with rage and despair._) ANSORGE (_flings his basket from him into a corner, rises, his whole body trembling with rage, gasps_):--And the time's come now for a change, I say. We'll stand it no longer! We'll stand it no longer! Come what may! Alton Locke's Song: 1848 BY CHARLES KINGSLEY (See pages 78, 84, 223) Weep, weep, weep and weep For pauper, dolt and slave! Hark! from wasted moor and fen Feverous alley, stifling den, Swells the wail of Saxon men-- Work! or the grave! Down, down, down and down, With idler, knave, and tyrant! Why for sluggards cark and moil? He that will not live by toil Has no right on English soil! God's word's our warrant! Up, up, up and up! Face your game and play it! The night is past, behold the sun! The idols fall, the lie is done! The Judge is set, the doom begun! Who shall stay it? BY G. BERNARD SHAW Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the Rich is Uselessness. BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL (American lawyer and lecturer, 1883-1899) Whoever produces anything by weary labor, does not need a revelation from heaven to teach him that he has a right to the thing produced. Labor (A parody upon a poem by Rudyard Kipling; author unknown. The poem is frequently, but incorrectly, attributed to Mr. Kipling) We have fed you all for a thousand years, And you hail us still unfed, Tho' there's never a dollar of all your wealth But marks the workers' dead. We have yielded our best to give you rest, And you lie on crimson wool; For if blood be the price of all your wealth Good God, we ha' paid 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 cursed wealth Good God, we ha' paid it in!