Behold, thou rememberest not the condition of the fellah (farmer) when the harvest is taken over. The worms carry off half the corn, and the hippopotamus devours the rest; mice abound in the fields, and locusts arrive; the cattle devour, the sparrows steal. How miserable is the lot of the fellah! What remains on the threshing-floor, robbers finish it up. The bronze ... are worn out, the horses die with threshing and plowing. Then the scribe (lawyer) moors at the bank, who is to take over the harvest for the government; the attendants bear staves, the negroes carry palm sticks. They say, "Give corn!" But there is none. They beat the fellah prostrate; they bind him and cast him into the canal, throwing him headlong. His wife is bound before him, his children are swung off; his neighbors let them go, and flee to look after their corn. But the scribe is the leader of labor for all; he reckons to himself the produce in winter, and there is none that appoints him his tale of produce. Behold, now thou knowest! Farmer and Lawyer Again (_From "The Vision of Piers Plowman"_) BY WILLIAM LANGLAND (One of the earliest of English social protests, a picture of the misery of the workers of the fourteenth century) Some were for ploughing, and played full seldom, Set their seed and sowed their seed and sweated hard, To win what wastrels with gluttony destroy.... There wandered a hundred in hoods of silk, Serjeants they seemed, and served at the Bar, Pleading the Law for pennies and for pounds, Unlocking their lips never for love of our Lord. Thou mightest better mete the mist on Malvern hills Than get a mutter from their mouths--save thou show thy money! The Agitator BY ISAIAH (Hebrew prophet, B.C. 740) For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, And for Jerusalem's sake will I not rest, Until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, And the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, have I set watchmen, Who shall never hold their peace, day and night. Go through, go through the gates; Prepare ye the way of the people! Lift up a standard to the peoples! The Muckraker in Persia BY NIZAMI (Persian poet, A.D. 1200)