[00:06.07]If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
[00:08.29]You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
[00:10.57]You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
[00:12.90]But if you all stick together, now, ‘twont he long.
[00:15.58]You'll get shorter hours,
[00:18.91]Better working conditions.
[00:21.35]Vacations with pay,
[00:22.57]Take your kids to the seashore.
[00:25.23]It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain
[00:27.48]Just why you got to ride on the union train;
[00:29.84]‘Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay, We'll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
[00:34.69]We'll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
[00:39.97]Saint Peter'll be the straw boss then.
[00:44.33]Now, you know you're underpaid, hut the boss says you ain't;
[00:46.65]He speeds up the work till you're ‘bout to faint,
[00:48.92]You may he down and out, but you ain't beaten,
[00:51.10]Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'
[00:53.64]Talk it over - speak your mind -
[00:58.77]Decide to do something about it.
[01:02.55]‘Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
[01:06.86]But you can always tell a stool, though - that's a fact;
[01:09.46]He's got a yellow streak running down his back;
[01:11.60]He doesn't have to stool - he'll always make a good living
[01:15.43]On what he takes out of blind men's cups.
[01:24.57]You got a union now; you're sitting pretty;
[01:26.79]Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
[01:28.83]The boss won't listen when one man squawks.
[01:31.30]But he's got to listen when the union talks.
[01:33.66]He better -
[01:35.98]He'll be mighty lonely one of these days.
[01:47.20]Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous,
[01:48.37]They're paying you all starvation wages;
[01:50.03]You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
[01:52.22]"Before I'd raise your pay I'd see you all in Hell." Well, he's puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
[01:54.55]He thinks he's got your union licked.
[01:59.69]He looks out the window, and what does he see
[02:01.29]But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
[02:03.63]He's a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
[02:10.40]Bet he beats his own wife.
[02:15.74]Now, boy, you've come to the hardest time;
[02:18.26]The boss will try to bust your picket line.
[02:20.20]He'll call out the police, the National Guard;
[02:22.30]They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card.
[02:24.56]They'll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
[02:26.73]Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
[02:29.06]Unpatriotic - Japanese  spy-
[02:35.45]Bomb throwers, even the kids.
[02:39.90]But out in Detroit here's what they found,
[02:41.79]And out in Frisco here's what they found,
[02:43.96]And out in Pittsburgh here's what they found,
[02:46.13]And down in Bethlehem here's what they found,
[02:48.36]That if you don't let Red-baiting break you up,
[02:50.80]If you don't let stool pigeons break you up,
[02:52.98]If you don't let vigilantes break you up,
[02:55.14]And if you don't let race hatred break you up -
[02:57.52]You'll win. What I mean,
[02:59.06]Take it easy - but take it!
[03:02.08]