The Worker’s Platform

Come, brother workers, one and all, 
Get ready for the fight: 
We’re going now to battle for 
The cause of Human Right. 
First let us get our heritage, 
The right to own the soil; 
And then we’ll see who’ll nabobs be 
On other people’s toil.

Then raise the worker’s platform, 
The right of all to land; 
The right to toil and eat the fruit, 
In justice we demand; 
The right to make, the right to own, 
To freely sell and buy; 
Say! who is there can show the wrong, 
Or dare the right deny?

Why should we heed the tyrant’s laws, 
By which the few can hold 
The land which should belong to all, 
Which now they sell for gold? 
With gold they buy our brethren, while 
They rob us of our land; 
Then we must starve or sell our toil 
To feed the robber band.

‘Tis time the proud and lazy drones 
To toil should have a chance 
That out of their own labour they 
May pipe and sing and dance; 
We’ve kept them idle long enough 
In luxury and pride; 
‘Tis only right that they with us 
The labour should divide. 

And then our wives and children dear 
Will have some time to learn; 
In poetry and music sweet, 
And dancing take a turn. 
When decked by their own honest toil, 
Who knows but they may shine 
As well as any gentle folk 
We’ve fed and clothed so fine. 

We would not harbour vile revenge, 
Nor wrong return for wrong; 
But still we want such slavery 
They should no more prolong. 
To do as we’d be done unto, 
Is all that we demand;
To justly share with them the toil, 
And they with us the land.