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

Plying her needle and thread—

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt;

And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,

Would that its tone could reach the rich!—

She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”

A London Sweating Den[G]

(From “The People of the Abyss”)

By Jack London

(California novelist and Socialist; born 1876. The story of his life will be found on p. 732. For the work here quoted London lived among the people whose misery he describes)