﻿When Both Are Wrong— 
 
Yesterday an ageing man remarked with sober face, 
“The trouble in this country isn’t very hard to place: 
“Too many fawning foreigners our noble laid disgrace, 
“They should be driven from our shore to some far distant base.” 
 
“Oh yeah.” chimes in the humorist, “so that would end your care’s 
And help the feeding of the sixty-thousand millionaires? 
That that would serve to dissipate the low of soul-despairs 
And Undoubtedly they’d take the loss—I hope I make it plain: 
Your sturdy home-grown ankles would still oscillate a chain. 
 
Your remedy is not so good—except in this respect 
The fewer left behind could not support that grasping sect 
The god- of greed would straight way “load of hate” in them inject 
And cause the worthy millionairs each other to disset. 
 
There’s not so much percentage in your deportation plan. 
The trick is how to get the bacon, for to grease the pan. 
Perhaps we better organize with yonder foreign man 
And put on pay-roll thieves a “closed for alterations” ban. 
 
It sounds like Knights of Araby, “the sixty-thousand thieves”, 
Enough to give a trusting soul a case virgin heaves 
And if you should deport them all but one—that action leaves 
Sufficient able plutocrats to gather in the sheaves. 
 
If you get yours, you worry not about the gifted crooks; 
So long as you get caviar, you chase not after cooks; 
So long as you have mountain trout, you wade not in the brooks— 
And these you’ll get when organized, and not by wistful looks. 
 
Nay brother, with the foreigner agone, I think you’d find 
The coining of those millions would still constitute a grind; 
The coining of new platitudes would still your vision blind 
And the shackles of your servitude would still your ankles bind. 
 
Regardless of how many starve, how many faint or fall! 
Regardless of how many work, how many hit the ball! 
Those birds are in it not for health or contributions small; 
Their objective is ease and wealth, their aim to grab it all. 
 
So, if your foreigner was gone beyond the bounding main. 
The much or little you produced would be the bosses’ gain. 
Moral: Join the I. W. W.