Page:Poems for Workers - ed. Manuel Gomez (1925).djvu/49

 I am the People, the Mob

By CARL SANDBURG.

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is

done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the

world's food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons

come from me and the Lincolns. They die.

And I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for

much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I

forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.

I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and

makes me work and give up what I have. And

I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red

drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the

People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer

forget who robbed me last year, who played me

for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the

world say the name: "The People," with any

fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of

derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.