Come on all you working folk, a story I'll relate
How workers in the coal mines fare in Pennsylvania state
Come hear a sad survivor from beside his children's graves
And hear how free Americans are treated now as slaves.
For years we toiled on patiently, they cut our wages down
We struck they sent the Pinkertons to drive us from the town
We held a meeting near the mine, some hasty words were said
A volley from the Pinkertons left half a dozen dead
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore - our lives away
I had a wife and family, the youngest scarce could creep
That night the hireling ruffian band aroused us out of sleep
They battered in our cabin door, we pleaded all in vain
They took my wife and children out to perish in the rain.
They died of cold and famine there, beneath the open sky
While pitying neighbors stood around, but all as poor as I
You never saw such misery, God grant you never may
The sight is branded on my soul until my dying day.
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore - our lives away
That night I wandered 'round the spot and just beyond the town
I met a dastard Pinkerton and struck the villain down
My brain was frenzied with the thought of children friends and wife
I set my heel upon his throat - and trampled out his life
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore - our lives away..
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore… our lives away.
So now I roam an outlawed man, no house or friends have I
And if the law should track me down I shall be doomed to die
But very little should I care what may become of me
If all the land would rise, I swear these things no more shall be..
…If all the land would rise, I swear
These things no more shall be!
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore our lives away.
How workers in the coal mines fare in Pennsylvania state
Come hear a sad survivor from beside his children's graves
And hear how free Americans are treated now as slaves.
For years we toiled on patiently, they cut our wages down
We struck they sent the Pinkertons to drive us from the town
We held a meeting near the mine, some hasty words were said
A volley from the Pinkertons left half a dozen dead
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore - our lives away
I had a wife and family, the youngest scarce could creep
That night the hireling ruffian band aroused us out of sleep
They battered in our cabin door, we pleaded all in vain
They took my wife and children out to perish in the rain.
They died of cold and famine there, beneath the open sky
While pitying neighbors stood around, but all as poor as I
You never saw such misery, God grant you never may
The sight is branded on my soul until my dying day.
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore - our lives away
That night I wandered 'round the spot and just beyond the town
I met a dastard Pinkerton and struck the villain down
My brain was frenzied with the thought of children friends and wife
I set my heel upon his throat - and trampled out his life
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore - our lives away..
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore… our lives away.
So now I roam an outlawed man, no house or friends have I
And if the law should track me down I shall be doomed to die
But very little should I care what may become of me
If all the land would rise, I swear these things no more shall be..
…If all the land would rise, I swear
These things no more shall be!
They robbed us of our pay,
They starved us day by day
They shot us down on the hillside brown
And swore our lives away.
Contributed by giorgio - 2009/11/5 - 08:23
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Parole e musica di Thomas Phillips Thompson (1843-1933), inglese di nascita ma trapiantato in Canada, giornalista, militante del Knights of Labor e poi del Partito socialista. Autore del volumetto di canzoni “The labor reform songster”, pubblicato nel 1892 sul “Journal of the Knights of Labor”, in cui si trova anche questa canzone.
[2005]
Album: If All The Land Would Rise
Lyrics by Phillips Thompson (1892); Music by Ethan Miller
The anthracite coal of Pennsylvania, like all such precious industrial fuels, was extracted and refined by people working endless hours in dangerous conditions for little pay. The excessive costs of company housing and company store provisions forced mining families into an endless cycle of debt-ridden enslavement to the mine owners. In the mid to late 1800’s, the Knights of Labor organized miners to challenge these conditions. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, a private army upon whom modern state police forces are modeled, was hired by the owners to destroy the unions.
The Pinkerton thugs still exist in the form of Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, Inc., a "business intelligence agency" that works with the CIA and National Security Administration to offer services to multinational corporations that include "crisis management" and “workplace compliance solutions.” This is a song about what those phrases really mean.