Page:When the Leaves Come Out (Chaplin 1917).pdf/51

 

This story may of interest be, although its none too nice— The story of a mine-guard thug who had to pay the price. You know well, boys, the kind I mean, they'd steal an orphan's shoes Or sell their mother's honor for a swig of rot-gut booze. They are the watch-dogs, so its claimed, of property and life, And yet they rob and rape and kill; grow prosperous on strife. They carry "gats" to "get you" and "knucks" to crack your jaw Yet live in fat security, protected by the "Law"— The law that is for Parasites steel bars to clutch their prey And for the workers of the world the Club that means "obey"!

This tale is of Kanawha when the strike was getting hot, And some men worked and some men scabbed and many men were shot. The men who scabbed were living hard, the men at work scabbed too, Although they said "the 'contract' left them nothing else to do." The men on strike resisted well, of that there is no doubt; 