| DO you think that odes and sermons, | |
| And the ringing of church bells, | |
| And the blood of old men and young men, | |
| Martyred for the truth they saw | |
| With eyes made bright by faith in God, | 5 |
| Accomplished the world’s great reformations? | |
| Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic | |
| Would have been heard if the chattel slave | |
| Had crowned the dominant dollar, | |
| In spite of Whitney’s cotton gin, | 10 |
| And steam and rolling mills and iron | |
| And telegraphs and white free labor? | |
| Do you think that Daisy Fraser | |
| Had been put out and driven out | |
| If the canning works had never needed | 15 |
| Her little house and lot? | |
| Or do you think the poker room | |
| Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard’s bar | |
| Had been closed up if the money lost | |
| And spent for beer had not been turned, | 20 |
| By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes | |
| For larger sales of shoes and blankets, | |
| And children’s cloaks and gold-oak cradles? | |
| Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth | |
| Which must be propped with gold. | 25 |
