Revisiting IWW's `Wage Workers, Come Join The Union' protest folk and labor song Lyrics

As the 2007 book, The Big Red Songbook, which Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont and Salvatore Salerno edited, noted, the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] protest folk and labor song, "Wage Workers, Come Join The Union," was written by an anonymous worker in the early 20th-century.

And the following "Wage Workers, Come Join The Union" lyrics can be sung to the same traditional folk song tune which the melody of "John Brown's Body," "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Solidarity Forever" songs utilize:

"We have seen the reaper toiling in the heat of summer sun,

We have seen his children needy when the harvesting was done.

We have seen a mighty army dying, helpless, one by one,

While their flag went marching on.

(chorus)

Wage workers, come join the union!

Wage workers, come join the union!

Wage workers, come join the union!

Industrial Workers of the World.

O, the army of the wretched, how they swarm the city street--

We have seen them in the midnight, where the Goths and Vandals meet;

We have shuddered in the darkness at the noises of their feet,

But their cause went marching on. (chorus)

But no longer shall the children bend above the whizzing wheel,

We will free the weary women from their bondage under steel;

In the mines and in the forest worn and helpless man shall feel

That his cause is marching on. (chorus)

Then lift your eyes, ye toilers, in the desert hot and drear,

Catch the cool winds from the mountains.

Hark! the river's voice is near;

Soon we'll rest beside the fountain and the dreamland will be here

As we go marching on. (chorus)