What have they done to you, men of the masses, creeping back and forth to work?
What have they done to you, the saviours of the people, oh what have they saved you from, while they pocketed the money?
Alas, they have saved you from yourself, from your own frail dangers
and devoured you with the machine, the vast maw of iron.
They saved you from your squalid cottages and poverty of hand to much
and embedded you in workmen’s dwellings, where your wage is the dole of work, and the dole is your wage of nullity.
They took away, oh they took away your man’s native instincts and intuitions
and gave you a board-school education, newspapers, and the cinema.
They stole your body from you, and left you an animated carcass
to work with, and nothing else:
unless goggling eyes, to goggle at the film
and a board-school brain, stuffed up with the ha’penny press.
Your instincts gone, your intuitions gone, your passions dead
Oh carcass with a board-school mind and a ha’penny newspaper intelligence,
what have they done to you, what have they done to you, Oh what have they done to you?
Oh look at my fellow-men, oh look at them
the masses! Oh, what has been done to them?