We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years

We have fed you all for a thousand years

And you hail us still unfed

Though 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

And if blood be the price of all your wealth

Good God! We have paid in full!

There is 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 have paid it in!

We have fed you all for a thousand years

For that was our doom, you know

From the days when you chained us in your fields

To the strike a week ago

You have taken our lives, our husbands and wives

And we're told it's your legal share

But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth

Good God! We have bought it fair!