There would be no one to hear them if they cried out; there would be no help, no mercy. And so on until morning--when they would go out to another day of toil, a little weaker, a little nearer to the time when it would be their turn to be shaken from the tree. The Sad Sight of the Hungry BY LI HUNG CHANG (A poem by the Chinese statesman, 1823-1901; known as the "Bismarck of Asia," and said to have been the richest man in the world) 'Twould please me, gods, if you would spare Mine eyes from all this hungry stare That fills the face and eyes of men Who search for food o'er hill and glen. Their eyes are orbs of dullest fire, As if the flame would mount up higher; But in the darkness of their glow We know the fuel's burning low. Such looks, O gods, are not from thee! No, they're the stares of misery! They speak of hunger's frightful hold On lips a-dry and stomachs cold. "Bread, bread," they cry, these weary men, With wives and children from the glen! O, they would toil the live-long day But for a meal, their lives to stay. But where is it in all the land? Unless the gods with gen'rous hand Send sweetsome rice and strength'ning corn To these vast crowds to hunger born! The Right to be Lazy BY PAUL LAFARGUE (A well-known Socialist writer of France. He and his wife, finding themselves helpless from old age and penury, committed suicide together) Does any one believe that, because the toilers of the time of the mediæval guilds worked five days out of seven in a week, they lived upon air and water only, as the deluding political economists tell us? Go to! They had leisure to taste of earthly pleasure, to cherish love, to make and to keep open house in honor of the great God, _Leisure_. In those days, that morose, hypocritically Protestant England was called "Merrie England." Rabelais, Quevedo, Cervantes, the unknown authors of the spicy novels of those days, make our mouths water with their descriptions of those enormous feasts, at which the peoples of that time regaled themselves, and towards which "nothing was spared." Jordaens and the Dutch school of painters have portrayed them for us, in their pictures of jovial life. Noble, giant stomachs, what has become of you? Exalted spirits, ye who comprehended the whole of human thought, whither are ye gone? We are thoroughly degenerated and dwarfed. Tubercular cows, potatoes, wine made with fuchsine, beer from saffron, and Prussian whiskey in wise conjunction with compulsory labor have weakened our bodies and dulled our intellects. And at the same time that mankind ties up its stomach, and the productivity of the machine goes on increasing day by day, the political economists wish to preach to us Malthusian doctrine, the religion of abstinence and the dogma of work! The First Machine BY ANTIPAROS (Greek, First Century, A. D. The poet celebrates the invention of the water-mill for grinding corn)