TWELVE HUNDRED MORE



O workingmen dear, and did you hear

The news that's goin' round?

Another China steamer

Has been landed here in town.

Today I read the papers,

And it grieved my heart full sore

To see upon the title page,

O, just "Twelve Hundred More!"



O, California's coming down,

As you can plainly see.

They are hiring all the Chinamen

And discharging you and me;

But strife will be in every town

Throughout the Pacific shore,

And the cry of old and young shall be,

"O, damn, 'Twelve Hundred More' "

They run their steamer in at night

Upon our lovely bay;

If 'twas a free and honest trade,

They'd land it in the day.

They come here by the hundreds

The country is overrun

And go to work at any price-

By them the labor's done.



If you meet a workman in the street

And look into his face,

You'll see the signs of sorrow there

Oh, damn this long-tailed race!

And men today are languishing

Upon a prison floor,

Because they've been supplanted by

This vile "Twelve Hundred More!"



Twelve hundred honest laboring men

Thrown out of work today

By the landing of these Chinamen

In San Francisco Bay.

Twelve hundred pure and virtuous girls

In the papers I have read,

Must barter away their virtue

To get a crust of bread.



This state of things can never last

In, this our golden land,

For soon you'll hear the avenging cry,

"Drive out the China man!"

And then we'll have the stirring times

We had in days of yore,

And the devil take those dirty words

They call "Twelve Hundred More!"



From American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century, Foner

Note: In 1877-1878, Dennis Kearney's Working Men's Party achieved

some political success in California by attacking, not the other

political parties or the bosses, but the Chinese who were

imported as a source of cheap labor. The party splintered and

broke up shortly after, but left a legacy of exclusionary

legislation aimed at the Chinese in California.



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