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 - Unknown

(From “The Vision of Piers Plowman”)

By William Langland

(One of the earliest of English social protests, a picture of the misery of the workers of the fourteenth century)

Some were for ploughing, and played full seldom,

Set their seed and sowed their seed and sweated hard,

To win what wastrels with gluttony destroy....

There wandered a hundred in hoods of silk,

Serjeants they seemed, and served at the Bar,