The Price We Pay.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 78, 6 September 1912, Page 8

The Price We Pay.

AN INDICTMENT OF CAPITALIST RULE. By CHARLES LAIRO. On July 2(5, nineteen hundred and twelve years after tlie birth of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, an infant, Leo. David F. Williams, died of !-l:ir\'iilion in Christchurch. The chihi was born on June 18 of the same •car. which means t-hnl, it spent 3S days in this world of ours, during which time it lay slowly perishing from hunger. At birth it weighed olb., at death 31b., and all the food it obtained was an occasional dessertspoonful of milk and some barley water. The bouse was abominably filthy and unlit for human beings; the father was a mental degenerate, and grinned when told of his infant son's death; the mother w.'ubl sometimes go to her father, an old-age pensioner, and get some food for herself. The. baby was in such a state that she was afraid to wash it. This is the pi ice we pay for empire and capitalist riilo.

Then Haunt your boasted national flag, let gnus and cannons roar, Let England's might and England's blight cviend from shore to shore. Go! shout of empires, kings and creeds; go, bend your servile knee, And lick tin- dust, praise ruler's lust, and kiss the filagree. Gold braid and tossing feather-plumes and strutting, war-crazed men, Raise passions wild—a starving child is left iv Hunger's den To die like some unwanted beast, to scream and cry for food; To feel the touch of Famine's clutch sucking its scanty blood. Your wives have silk —a mother's milk it did not learn to know. For Hunger's guests have barren breasts, and death is sure and slow. He does not come with pomp or power, with gaudy raiment garbed ; But to the poor his face is dour, his shafts are cruel and barbed. No fame, or glory have the poor, only foul, rank decay — The filthy home, the slinking loam on which their children play. He slays the weak, be* slays the poor, he spares the foul and strong; For his vile need and ghastly greed a year is not too long. / The woman gripped with childbirth pain he gloats and hovers o'er, While she, poor tool, breeds one more fool to light your lustful war. You boast of empire, prate of strength, and for an idol have A fangless despot shorn of might, a spineless, puling slave.

A Dreadnought grand—while in the land a babe starves hour by hour, Are worthy of your coward rule—what else from rich men's power?. To send your soldiers off to crush a nation that is free Is noble work for those who shirk and bless the gallows tree.

Tho empire proud of which you,prate sweeps with its fleets the main, But a loaf of bread cannot be spared to make men strong again. Bask for the while in Fortune's smile —it'll not be alway so— And spend the wealth you gained by stealth, and spurn the toilers low. The cry of men is ringing out—"they come from very far" — And gilds the cloud-wracked hazy sky, the blood-red avatar. Their eyes have seen the morning rays, the glory of the dawn, And Freedom's hymn is sweet to them who've felt your age-long scorn. Their feet are beating on the road, before them is tho light That gleams with radiance all divine — behind them is the Night.