Ballad of a Wobbly

When I came to this country, left Scotland far behind

Evicted from the highlands, told to go and find

A new life in America across the Atlantic Sea

Where I joined the millions of other refugees

Who ended up at Ellis Island as the century began

The wretched of the Earth from every foreign land

When I came to this country, broken and bereft

I quickly saw I'd have been no worse off if I'd never left

Such awful deprivations as I'd never had to face

Borne by Swedes and Russians, Africans and every other race

Millions of people trying not to end up dead

From cholera or blacklung or getting clubbed on the head

When I came to this country, to have something on my fork

It was obvious the first thing was to get out of New York

I learned to hop the free trains, some other stiffs and I

Caught a westbound rattler to give Oregon a try

Signed up for the logging camps, became a timber beast

If I'd stayed there any longer I'd have surely been deceased

When I came to this country, I worked the copper mines in Butte

I was a gandy dancer in Spokane in a gandy dancer suit

I heard the Rebel Girl speak one night in a railway yard

I joined the union right away and got my first red card

I became a hobo organizer for the One Big Union grand

Preaching the Wobbly gospel across this starving land

When I came to this country, I soon enough lost track

Of the number of times I felt a billy club upon my back

Or how many times I saw the tents with freezing kids

Working in the mines instead of living on the skids

How many times I heard the horrid crying from below

Of those trapped there in the dungeons with nowhere left to go

When I came to this country, it was a hopeful time of desperation

The red flags flew all across the nation

But when the war began in Europe we refused to die and kill

We refused to fight a bosses' war and serve the bosses' will

That's when they got the Legion to burn down our union halls

All across the land, where there used to be four walls

When I came to this country, I had no great expectations

But I didn't think I'd end up back here awaiting deportation

On a steamship on the Hudson, I watch the sunset fade

With 20,000 others swept up in the Palmer Raids

Counting myself lucky that I'm still alive

Remembering the moment that I first arrived

When I came to this country

When I came to this country

When I came to this country...