Dawn Fraser: Echoes From Labor's War

The Parasites

In every contest between Capital and Labor, I am with Labor and against Capital first, last, and all the time. And if you ask me what percentage of the actual product of labor capital should receive, I cry loudly, "None, damn it, none!" But be assured that I class all worthy productive or creative effort as labor, and summed up, my contention simply is that any person who does not work at all, should not eat at all, excepting of course invalids and children.

Met a fellow the other day,
As I was roaming along the way,
They called him a radical, socialist, red,
Lowbrowed wretch who had been misled.
He talked of the workers, talked of their cause,
Talked of the country, talked of its laws
An old young man, though tattered and frayed,
He was wise to the way the game was played;
None of your whiskered, bomb-throwing kind,
He had some ideas at large in his mind;
Dreamed of a day when his kind would be free—
Here's some of the line he handed to me:

Imagine a world of a hundred men,
And suppose they were workers every one;
God gave us the soil, God gives us the rain,
And for little work God gives us the grain.
A hundred cry "Clothing!" a hundred cry "Meat!"
But fifty work and a hundred eat.
If the idle half and their fathers and mothers
Would all go to work, they'd be little work-brothers,
But Jones and Smith and Green and Brown
Do all the work, while the rest stand round.
What of the other fifty per cent?
Jones and company pay them rent;
But 'twas Jones and company built the whole town—
I'm ashamed of you, Jones and Green and Brown.

Clara Vere de Vere's grandpa
Was a better thief than your grandma;
There goes Clara in her car,
She's kind to the poor as she drives up-street,
If the poor don't work, Clara don't eat.
Who is that with her? Reggie Deluxe,
His old man was a prince of crooks—
Two helpless, hopeless, pitiful tools,
Though they toured the world and been through schools;
Producing nothing, everything bought—
The day they die the world will lose naught.
Your little bootblack, untutored, untaught,
Has his use in the world, while these others have not.

From Clara's shoes to her new French gown,
Not a thing does Clara own;
Madame Dupré makes her suits,
Paris workmen build her boots;
Her hats are made by working girls,
Her maid Nanette combs out her curls,
This same Nanette puts on her clothes
And pedicures her little toes.
Her lunch is served by 'Enry 'Awes,
She hustles for neither meat nor sauce,
But discusses the servant problem—
"Really, it's hard to bother with them,
This most annoying servant class,"
She remarks to Mrs. Van Dam Ass.

Beasts in the jungle, bums on the street,
All must hustle that they may eat;
Fish in the sea and birds in the air,
Must hunt around for a living fare.
Nature for naught has naught to give—
You have to work if you want to live;
But Clara and her useless kin
Neither sow nor do they spin,
For they have gold—oh, they don't need to —
Yet gold will neither clothe nor feed you.
The world is nicely arranged for them
Who live by the efforts of other men—
Live by the sweat of the poor and weak,
Then marvel that men turn bolshevik.

Call me a socialist, radical, red,
Turning to me the old guy said,
"A lazy, disinterested, radical dub,
I may be all that, but I rustle my grub;
And I'm taking no job in your factory or mine,
I'm off the stuff, it's out of my line;
But I never beg and I never steal,
I do an odd job when I want a meal.
Maybe you cannot see it my way,
But that's all I get if I work all day.
If the deal was square, I'd do my bit,
If all would work, I'd never quit;
But I'm keeping no Claras—aw, what's the use?
It's her kind cry "production"—well, let 'em produce."

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