Hides–The Toughest of the Tough


A poem by H.S.C.

How many hides are grown in a year ?
How many bought and sold ?
How many are salted, cured, and baled ?
For how many buckets of gold ?

Hides that are heavy, hides that are light.
Hides that are merely veneer ;
From those that are tanned in the boy's back room
To those of the genuine steer.

Hides in boxes, hides in bales,
Piled in the export store ;
Rushing them up in a frantic rush,
To crowd in as many more.

And those are the hides for soldiers' belts,
Bluchers and bandoliers ;
Hides that have not nothing at all to hide
Save the shame of the profiteers.

But the hide that is thick, the toughest of tough,
Will come in its own some day ;
for it is the hide of the non-union man
Who is drawing a union pay.

Notes

Published in The Worker Thursday 13 September 1917

H.S.C. in "Railway Review"

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