THIRTY CENTS A DAY!



In a dim-lighted chamber a dying maiden lay,

The tide of her pulses was ebbing fast away;

In the flush of her youth she was worn with toil and care,

And starvation showed its traces on the festures once so fair.



cho: No more the work-bell calls the wery one,

Rest, tired wage-slave, in your grave unknown;

Your feet will no more tread life's thorny, rugged way,

They have murdered you by inches upon thirty cents a day !



From earliest childhood she'd toiled to win her bread,

In hunger and rags, oft she wished that she were dead;

She knew naught of life's joys or the pleasures wealth can bring,

Or the glory of the woodland in the merry days of spring.



cho:



By the rich she was tempted to eat the bread of shame,

But her mother dear had taught her to value her good name;

Mid want and starvation she waved temptation by,

As she would not sell her honor she in poverty must die.



cho:



Too late, Christian ladies! You cannot save her now,

She breathes out her life --- see the death-damp on her brow;

Full soon she'll be sleeping beneath the churchyard clay,

While you smile on those who killed her with thirty cents a day.



cho:



From American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century, Foner

Note: A Knights of Labor Song: somewhere between 1865 and 1890,

I'd guess. RG

tune: Faded Coat of Blue

@union @work

filename[ THRTYCNT

play.exe FADECOAT

RG

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