If you give him the "Work" that he yells for with so much wild blather and blare,
What sort of a fist will he make of it? Which of the blustering band
Has a really sound head on his shoulders, a really skilled craft to his hand?
And Capital wrangles with Labour, each hating the other like snakes;
And the Foreigner creeps in and up, and the Board Agent comes and he takes
Our boys, and he crams 'em with kibosh as makes 'em too big for their breeches;
But real true bread-winning knowledge—the stuff that the Bench only teaches—
They don't find set down in their books, with their 'isms and 'ometries—no;
But the nipper's turned out in the world, and then what shall he turn to?—where go?
Cheap clerking, or rule-of-thumb drudgery, bands, and black flags, and that rot?