Ballad of a Wobbly

When I came to this country

Left Scotland far behind

Evicted from the highlands

Told to go and find

A new life in America

Across the Atlantic sea

Where I joined the millions

Of other refugees

Who ended up at Ellis island

As the century began

The wretched of the earth

From every foreign land

When I came to this country

Broken and bereft

I quickly saw I'd had been no worse off if I'd never left

Such awful deprivations as I'd never had to face

Born by Swedes and Russians, Africans and every other race

Millions of people trying not to end up dead

From cholera or black lung

Or being clubbed on the head

When i came to this country

To have something on my fork

It was obvious the first thing was to get out of New York

I learned to hop the freight trains

Some other stiffs and I

Caught a west-bound rattler to give Oregon a try

Signed up for the logging camps

Became a timber beast

If i'd have stayed there any longer

I'd have surely be deceased

When I came to this country

I worked the copper mines in Butte

I was a gandy dancer in Spokane

And a gandy dancer suit

I heard the rebel girl speak one night in a railway yard

I joined the union right away and got my first red card

Became a hobo organiser

For the one big union grand

Preaching the wobbly gospel

Across this starving land

When I came to this country

I soon enough lost track

Of the number of times I felt the billy-club upon my back

Or how many times i saw the tents

With freezing kids

Working in the mines instead of living on the skids

How many times I heard the horrid crying from below

Of those trapped there in the dungeons

With nowhere left to go

When I came to this country

It was a hopeful time of desperation

The red flags flew

All across the nation

But when the war began in Europe

We refused to die and kill

We refused to fight a bosses war and serve the bosses will

That's when they got the legion

To burn down our union halls

All across the land

Where there used to be four walls

When I came to this country

I had no great expectations

But I didn't think I'd end up back here awaiting deportation

On a steamship on the Hudson

I watch the sunset fade

With twenty-thousand others swept up in the palmer raids

Counting myself lucky that I'm still alive

Remembering the moment

That I first arrived

When I came to this country

When I came to this country

When I came to this country

When I came to this country