While we're waiting for the tune to come in, here's another song by Aunt Molly Jackson from the Draft Housing Song Book:

CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE EAST SIDE
(Words and music by Aunt Molly Jackson Circa 1936 As recorded by Alan Lomax and Elizabeth Barnicle, 1939 Recorded on Aunt Molly Jackson, Rounder Records 1002)

When Aunt Molly Jackson arrived in New York City in 1931, after years of struggle as a union organizer in the Kentucky coal fields, she found the forces of oppression and exploitation also at work in the Lower East Side tenement slums. She soon began writing songs and speaking out at demonstrations to protest these and other issues affecting the welfare of lower-income people. In this song, she begins by describing conditions in her apartment, with the utilities shut off on Christmas Eve.

My heart it is breaking; it's Christmas Eve night.
I'm in the slums of the East Side without any light.
I've no gas or electric to make myself a cup of tea
Oh, tell me, fellow workers, how can this be?

Tell me, fellow workers, how can this be,
A home of the brave and the land of the free?,
Starvation and misery is all that is free,
For poor hard-working masses like you and like me.

While the poor hard-working masses live in rat-infested slums,
Those rich and mighty grafters they all have nice homes;
Yes, the rich and mighty grafters they all have nice homes,
While hard-working masses live in old rat-infested slums.

The rich they have robbed us of our food and our homes,
Now they all live in luxury while we breathe on their crumbs;
Yes, the rich they have robbed us of our food and our homes,
Now they all live in luxury while we breathe on their crumbs.

So come along, fellow workers, and let us unite,
And take all that belongs to the laborers from those rich parasites;
United we stand and divided we fall,
Come join the Workers Alliance while I'm making this call.

Landlady's Daughter, not to be confused with Charley Noble