Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.
Mill Children(From Processionals)
John Curtis Underwood
(American poet, born 1874)W
We have forgotten how to smile. Our lips, our voices too are vile. We are all dead before we die.
Caused us to come to question you. What is it that you others do, that profit so by our distress?
Ere our sick spirits came to birth: you made our fair and fruitful earth a nest of pestilence and blight.
And flesh and blood more cheap than they, they seize and eat and shred away, to feed the fever of your haste.
Half imbecile and half obscene we sit and tend each tense machine, too sick to sigh, too tired to weep,
Until the tortured end of day, when fevered faces turn away, to see the stars from blackness leap.