THE WORKER.
I have broken my hands on your granite,
I have broken my strength on your steel,
I have sweated through years for your pleasure,
I have worked like a slave for your weal,
And what is the wage you have paid me
You masters and drivers of men –
Enough so I come in my hunger
To beg for more labor again!
I have given my manhood to serve you,
I have given my gladness and youth;
You have used me, and spent me, and crushed me,
And thrown me aside without ruth;
You have shut my eyes of from the sunlight,
My lungs from the untainted air,
You have housed me in horrible places
Surrounded by squalor and care.
I have built you the world in its beauty,
I have brought you the glory and spoil,
You have blightd my sons and my daughters,
You have scourged me again to my toil,
Yet I suffer it all in my patience
For somehow I dimly have known
That some day the worker will conquer
In a world that was meant for his own
—Berton Bradley.