- tune: John Brown’s Body
The People’s Songbook
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—
But the union makes us strong!
- Chorus:
Solidarity forever! (3 times)
For the union makes us strong.
It is we who plowed 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 wonder we have made,
But the union makes us strong!
It is we who wash the dishes, scrub the floors and case the dirt,
Feed the kids and send ‘em off to school and then we go to work.
While we work for half the wages for a boss that likes to flirt,
But the union makes us strong!
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!
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the union makes us strong!