  Take from your statute laws and books All legal protection for thieves and crooks; Your complicated bills of mechanics’ liens That offer to rogues the ample means The owners of houses with their demesnes To make go down humbly into their jeans For the jingly coin doubly to pay The working man, and padded expenses defray. Your unjust schemes of municipal taxation That cause home owners such great vexation. Your tax upon mortgages, bills and notes Upon which the poor man’s title barely floats, Causing him to pay levies upon his lands As if they were clear like the rich man’s; By increasing for him his interest and dues Which the money sharks collect as they choose. Your laws against usury one may take Tend solely the poor man’s back to break. You drive away the cheap money he might get, And leave him at the mercy of that lawless set Who fatten upon unfortunates suddenly thrown in debt. Nearly all your laws for the collection of dues Into our commercial life dishonesty infuse. Your regulations of homestead, exemption and stay Simply postpone our troubles to another day. By intricate trials with their writs and pleas; And copious objections about titles and fees, Remainders absolute, contingent and entailed, Upon technicalities numberless justice is impaled; Your instructions, your errors and appeals, Until the waiting, anxious litigant feels That the door of the temple of justice is locked; And his chance of right is securely blocked. Your free legal aid and your festive welfare board, Their matrons and clerks, a mighty hungry hoard, Impose upon the payers of taxes a weighty load; All for the purpose of sending over the road Some unfortunate victim of their own slimy graft Or some poor devil whom they kick “fore and aft.” Your Juvenile court of which the kids make sport, Where curtailed haired women and men hold the fort. And such institutions the wits of man can devise Are considered by Progressives as blessings in disguise. Your tariffs for protection passed in Congress halls To build all around us mighty Chinese walls, Are sapping from the people their dear blood of life, And making for politicians no end of deadly strife. Your proctor with his aids to fight against divorce; Who by his pugnacity is seeking to enforce Unfortunate couples bound in unhappy wedded lock To parade their troubles upon the public dock; And to bind the chains anew they seek to dissever, Holding them fast that he may be deemed clever, In the estimation of all the Christian Endeavor; And that class of persons who want now and forever To meddle in the affairs of all whomsoever Are not able to disclaim the care they obtain; Who crowd upon the weak the blessings they do not seek; All to achieve for themselves a home in the sky When from their missions on earth they fly. The Commissioners of Vice are pulling for a slice Of fame as it goes by investigating those Who employ many girls simply to keep them in hose And such other fancy articles that they suppose Will always make them shine when they go out to dine, As a girl dressed up haply feels fine. And now here comes Teddy with his big stick and hat For damages to his soiled name in legal spat, With a small newspaper man suing for a big chunk Because he published that T. R. had been drunk. To tell the names of men who are shams in our times Would overload my epic with variegated rhymes: The one named above is more than a man; He stands for ideas, a party and a clan Born of disappointment and just turned loose Sailing under the banner of the Big Bull Moose. This clique of theirs all swelling up to burst Decry all our institutions to be the very worst. They’d have our laws, judges and courts recalled, And others to suit them forthwith installed. They’d regulate the wages men have to pay, Neglecting to tell the laborer he might be in the way Unless his work he did should his employers pay; For unless his production his pay did compensate He and others would soon be off the slate. They told us too in tones as loud as they could prate How all the monied men and trusts they’d regulate, Carefully hiding the man who was running their slate, And supplying the funds for them to navigate. The working man too his dinner pail they’d fill Forgetting also to tell him to send in his bill. They’d secure to all the women free right to vote, So they could say to hubby: “We’ve got your goat.” And volumes of such ideas upon us did they float All too numerous in this article to quote. Drop your silly custom not worn off by growth That judicial bodies must put a witness to oath, That all he says and all that he shall quote Will be the truth and nothing but the truth, About the matters he relates in his witness booth. The reasons for this habit have long passed forsooth, It deceives none on bench or in jury box; It may occasionally aid some old, designing fox To some youthful, verdant judge deceive And, of some just debt himself relieve. On the whole, it does more harm than good As at present the thing is generally understood: For in a contested suit with one who knows Against a trembly one who partially shows Some lingering faith in “Old Scare Crows,” The inclination to lie and deceive in the one Would surely be by the other simply outdone: The one might be bound by the fears of hell While the other swears away his lies to tell. When the witness swears he’s perjured unawares, For by his plight he must the whole truth reveal By the rule he must more than half conceal. Stop your fight for prohibition and do the fair thing; Our people to temperance themselves will shortly bring. Take taxes off whisky, wine, liquor and beer; And, for the cause of temperance you needn’t have a fear. Let all your marts and markets freely sell Every kind of liquor they ever heard tell; Let every one the stuff make from gulf to lake; Make the price so cheap that with one leap, Men will forsake the common thing to keep. At one cent a drink the bar keeper will think His saloon will sink and soon put him on the brink |
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