The Song of the Merchant

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 58, 19 April 1912, Page 3

The Song of the Merchant

By VERNE DEWITT ROWELL. I am tho> merchant. Behold mc, smiling and corpulent, My body plump and rounded, Pleasing to the common horde, who oome to buy of mc, Day laborers; hewers of wood' and stone, : ■ ••■■•■ Earning their bitter bread wtih sweated brow. 1 ' They like to deal with mc, I am so fat, wcll-groomod and fed, But for to'look on mc makes them contented. I sing th*, long of the merchant, With alWa'vs tin's one refrain, Of gold, giild, gold; Out in the'busy street the hoofs of tho horses, The noisoof the car, Tho street Vendor's raucous cry and the footfalls of men, All the sounds of the street Grind out in a monotone, Shekels of silver and gold. I do not shrink from the unpleasant parts of my work, The coining of human lives into cold cash, That is nothing;' Woman's virtue, woman's whiteness of soul, I mint into white, silver dollars; That is to say, tho women who work in my mills, The girls in my shops, With their white bodies buy bread (for to live), While their day labor Fills up my ©offers with gold. Little children go hungry to bed, Weep with cold;. Never mind, their salt tears I transmute Into pearls of great price for the mart. There's a beggar who crie3 in the street, Men turn, for ho curses aloud, Rut out of his curses I mill More shekels of gold. Sorrow and laughter and tear*, 'Hie bodies of women and men, Stain with their warm, red blood The eternal mills of my greed, And seethe in tho furnace of self. Down in the depths- of the slum The gasp of the dying wretch, The moan of the mangled form, torn on my factory wheels; The cry of the starving mob, I do not hear; But only the clanking of gold. What of these husks of life, What of these bodies wan? Aro not their souls immortal? Do not their spirits live, ever livo on— Shrined in my silver and geld? "Chicago Daily Socialist."