The Worker's Message to Capitalism.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 14, 9 June 1911, Page 13

The Worker's Message to Capitalism.

[For The Ma.

Out of the pit where you've crushed us, out of the gutter and slum, Pouring from prisons and workhouse, creeping from brothels, we come— Fluttering and gibbering shadows, mocking your Church and State, Shades of abysmal darkness, hounding you down to your fate.

"God made the poor" is your watchword; "Christ clinched the matter," you say; That might be true in Judea, but it doesn't sound true to-day. Parsons preach "Life hereafter," when poor folk come to their own— We want to live in THIS world, and just leave the future alone.

We suffer this world's torments; we pay the price while here; We women sell our bodies,—what price our souls up there? Why should our sisters flout us? Had we the power to choose Think you we'd tread this winepress? think you we'd herd in stews?

Men with the hoe and the anvil, maimed and scarred in the fight; Women with bodies twisted, and eyes that have lost love's light; Babes who were starved and branded, while they fought for life in the womb ; Miners who crouched and sweated, toiling in living tomb.

Girls whose white flesh was bartered to foul disease or age ; Youths who have spilt their heart's blood your war lust thirst to assuage— Each with a sob and a wailing, e'er they lay them down to die, Indict "the system" you stand for, and curse it with stifled cry.

You that have branded our bodies, you that have stunted our brains, You that enslave our women to pile up blood-stained gains, You that exploit our children through the power money gives j You that sneer at our drunkards, and pocket the brewery "divsl"

Lo, we who once in ignorance hailed rich men "masters" and "lords;" Now -we indict them as spoilers, now we march on in our hordes— Yield us the land and the factories, steamers and railways and mines; Forego your sweated profits, give us your trusts and combines.

Ours are the brains that shall work them for uses of humankind;

By DORA B. MONTEFIORE.

iriijANd Worker.]

Science now is our handmaid, she has healed the once dumb and blind; She has whispered of life's beginnings, that the race in its long, slow rise, Shall outgrow exploiter and master, snail cast off priestly lies.

She has taught us to conquer Nature, and make her forces slaves; Has bade us fling wide-world highways, and chain the ocean waves. She has traced back through rock and fossil, through slime of river bed, The history of man's beginnings, the* record of ages dead.

Through the stone, and iron and firestick ; through amoeba, ape and man, She has shown us hope and failure since teeming life began; But the lesson we, the workers, have spelt through tears and sweat, Is the tale of upward struggle—ths TALE YOTT TOO OFT FORGET.

That all is flux, and "becoming" sex and chattel slaves, Serfs and industrial workers; through the days men dwelt in caves; Through wars and warrior prisoners, through Church and Feudal scorn, Through hunger, brandings, scourgings, through flesh and spirit torn;

'—that"

Till the days -when industrial slavery says to woman, child and man: "Tend the machine or perish; toil and compete all you can I Crush out the artist and dreamer, kick in the faces the poor; Wealth is the only standard, Success is the flattered whore!"

But while you feast, and we starvelings grind the commercial mill, Think you that evolution, favouring you, stands still? Think you the souls you trample back to the gutter and slum Never shall rise to_ judge you, never shall threatening come?

Armed with the light of Reason, girded with Science sword, We, who have lived as wage-slaves, flout you as master and lord! Room for the countless millions who are out to conquer "bread," Who will bring back grace and beauty to a world where Art is dead; Who will honour poet and teacher, and Labor's curse destroy, Who will make THIS world their heaven gf leisure, culture, joy— Room for "the Light of Science," for the Vision which began When poets, dreamers, — craftsmen taught the Brotherhood of Man 1