The Workers Outcry ['We have fed you all a thousand years']

We have fed you all 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,
For if blood be the price of all your wealth, 
Good God we have paid it 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 accursed wealth, 
Good God we have paid it in full.

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 of a week ago.
You have eaten our lives and our babes and wives,
And we’re told it’s our legal share,
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth, 
Good God we have bought it fair.

From The Firebrand : For Burning Away Of The Cobwebs of Ignorance and Superstition, March 7 1897
https://historicalseditions.noblogs.org/post/2023/05/01/free-society-and-the-firebrand-digitized-1895-1904/