“The Child Slaves” Sheet Music (pdf).
“The Child Slaves” Karaoke (midi with lyrics).
Lyrics: Richard Brazier.
Tune: “Annie Laurie.”
The masters’ children are bonny; in the sunshine long they play.
The workers’ children are hungry for the light of day.
No time for them to play in the sunshine warm and gay;
For the sake of Cap’talist dollars, they must wear their lives away.
Their little forms are stunted; their faces white and wan
From working in the sweatshops: the slaves of cruel man,
Unkempt, unfed and forlorn, crippled, maimed and torn.
For the sake of greedy Mammon are these little children born.
They never hear the birds sing or stroll through meadows green.
The flowers that bloom in springtime are by them never seen.
In the dark depths of the earth amid the roar of countless mills,
These little slaves are working at a dreadful pace that kills.
For the day is surely coming when the workers will awake
And free the little children, and the yoke of slav’ry break.
In One Big Union grand, organized the wide world o’er,
We will do away with slave and master forever, evermore.