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.
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