We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years

We have fed you all for a thousand years
 And you hail us still unfed
 Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth
 But marks the workers' dead.
 We have yielded our best to give you rest
 And you lie on crimson wool.
 Then if blood be the price of all your wealth,
 Good God, we have paid in full!
 There is never a mine blown skyward now
 But we're buried alive for you.
 And there's never a wreck drifts shoreward now
 But we are its ghastly crew.
 Go and reckon our dead by the forges red
 And the factories where we spin.
 If blood be the price of your cursed
 wealth
 Good God, we have paid it in!
 We have fed you all for a thousand years
 For that was our doom, you know
 From the days when you chained us in your fields
 To the strike of a week ago.
 You have taken our lives, and our husbands and wives
 And called it your your legal share
 Then if blood be the price of your lawful wealth
 Good God, we have bought it fair!