Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/416

 Tainted Wealth

(See page 298)

Capacious is the Church's belly; Whole nations it has swallowed down, Yet no dyspepsia 'neath its gown; The Church alone, in jewels drest, Your "tainted wealth" can quite digest.

The Collection

(American writer and social reformer, 1856-1907)

I passed the plate in church.

There was little silver, but the crisp bank-notes heaped themselves up high before me;

And ever as the pile grew, the plate became warmer and warmer until it burned my fingers, and a smell of scorching flesh rose from it, and I perceived that some of the notes were beginning to smoulder and curl, half-browned, at the edges.

And then I saw thru the smoke into the very substance of the money, and I beheld what it really was;

I saw the stolen earnings of the poor, the wide margins of wages pared down to starvation;

I saw the underpaid factory girl eking out her living on the street, and the overworked child, and the suicide of the discharged miner;