PAINT 'ER RED!

Come with us you workingmen and join the rebel band
Come you discontented ones and lend a helping hand
We march against the parasite to drive him from the land
With One Big Industrial Union

cho: Hurrah! hurrah! we're gonna paint 'er red!
Hurrah! hurrah! The way is clear ahead!
We're gaining shop democracy and liberty and bread
With One Big Industrial Union.

In factory and field and mine we gather in our might
We're on the job and know the way to win our hardest fight
For the beacon that shall guide us out of darkness into light
Is One Big Industrial Union.

Come on you fellows, get in line, we'll fill the boss with fears
Red's the colour of our flag, it's stained with blood and tears,
We'll flout it in his ugly mug and raise our loudest cheers
For One Big Industrial Union.

"Slaves", they call us, "working plugs", inferior by birth
But when we hit their pocketbooks, we'll spoil their smiles of mirth
We'll stop their dirty dividends and drive them from the earth
With One Big Industrial Union.

We hate their rotten system more than any mortals do
Our aim is not to patch it up but build it all anew
And what we'll have for government when finally we're through
Is One Big Industrial Union.

- by Ralph Chaplin, 1914 (he made Solidarity Forever, too). There was also
another (tamer) song to the tune, which appeared regularly in each edition
of the Little Red Songbook, called "One Big Industrial Union", made by G.C.
Allen, but the Chap[lin version, though I think never published in the songbook,

was the more popular. It was used by the prosection in several Wobbly sedition
trials to prove the IWW's revolutionary intent. JB

@political @IWW
filename[ PAINTRED
TUNE FILE: MRCHGRGA
CLICK TO PLAY
JB
Feb07
mudcat.org

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