The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest / The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

by Unknown

A mere existence, bare of hope and joy,

Bare even of comfort.

Comrades, stretched and bound

In agony on labor’s rock, we live—

And die—to fatten vultures!

To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire

By Walt Whitman

(America’s most original and creative poet, 1819-1892; printer and journalist, during the war an army nurse, and later a government clerk, discharged for publishing what his superiors considered an “indecent” book)

Not songs of loyalty alone are these,