Digital Tradition Mirror

Solidarity Forever

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Solidarity Forever

1. When the union's inspiration
   Through the workers' blood shall run,
   There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun,
   Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
   For the Union makes us strong.

cho: Solidarity forever, solidarity forever, solidarity forever
     For the Union makes us strong.

2. Is there ought we hold in common
   With the greedy parasite?
   Who would lash us into serfdom
   And would crush us with his might,
   Is there anything left to us
   But to organize and fight?
   For the union makes us strong.

3. It is we who ploughed the prairies,
   Built the cities where they trade,
   Dug the mines and built the workshops,
   Endless miles of railroad laid;
   Now we stand outcast and starving,
   'Mid the wonders we have made,
   But the Union makes us strong.

4. All the world that's owned by idle drones
   Is ours and ours alone,
   We have laid the wide foundations
   Built it skyward, stone by stone
   It is ours! Not to slave in
   But to master and to own
   While the union makes us strong.

5. They have taken untold millions
   That they never toiled to earn,
   But without our brain and muscle
   Not a single wheel can turn;
   We can break their haughty power,
   Gain our freedom when we learn
   That the Union makes us strong.

6. In our hands is placed a power,
   Greater than their hoarded gold,
   Greater than the might of atoms,
   Magnified a thousandfold;
   We can bring to birth a new world,
   From the ashes of the old
   For the Union makes us strong.

   Written January, 1915, by Ralph Chaplin
   From a book of songs put out by the AFL-CIO.
   @union @work
   play.exe JOHNBRWN
   filename[ SOLIDART
   DC

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!