Mike Gold Track

(chorus)
What workers write
What workers sing
Professors don't let you learn
But Mike Gold
The People's Writer
His columns the workers loved.
(verses)
Without money on the Lower East Side
He was forced to drop out school for a wage
But a way to escape was what he did find
When he discovered others felt his class rage.
He read books alone, taught himself how to write
Then wrote news about striking workers
From New England to Mexico, from the Village to Provincetown
He looked for truth to pass on to the "Masses." (chorus)

They called him the "Dean of Proletarian Literature"
Which he promoted in left magazines
"Liberator" and "New Masses," which he did edit,
Woke readers up with socialist dreams.
His "Change The World!" columns for the "Daily Worker"
Warned against Fascism and more wars
He wrote "The Life of John Brown" and his "Hollow Men" book
Exposed writers who deserted The Cause. (chorus)

In the Silent Decade he continued to write
For workers, like him, who were poor
In "Masses and Mainstream" and in "People's World"
He spoke truths that English Departments ignored.
The FBI watched him live in the Bronx
Then out to `Frisco he did flee
Though ill, he did write and never sold out
And praised the protests of the Sixties. (chorus)

He died in his seventies, but with wife raised two sons
At the same time he wrote "Change The World!"
Little cash he did earn from post-Fifties prose
But he left behind inspirational words. (chorus)