Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/784

 As it is, I'm at least a good "sou," But lacquer me over, and you Make me counterfeit ev'n among "sous."

Keep your pelf; I'm no hero, I fear, But if the world happens to hear Of this secret you think so profound, You'll know whence the story has sprung— My heart's like a lyre newly strung, One touch, and you make it resound!

To the Retainers

(From "Socialism and Success")

(American Socialist writer, born 1866)

You retainers and servitors of the men of wealth—you who from rostrum, pulpit and sanctum, from bar and bench, defend the existing régime and oppose the struggles of the working class for a better life; you whose business it is to find a practical, a judicial, an ethical and even a spiritual sanction for things as they exist, and who devise the cheap moralities which are the reflex of the interests of the class that employs you—there is a word to say to you which needs to be spoken. Upon those who take part in the forward movement of the time no more pressing duty is laid than that of telling you in plain words what millions of men are thinking of you

With what eager impulse and with what compliant will do you make yourselves the defenders of the present scheme of things and the assailants of the coming order!