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Thirty Cents a Day! 
Thirty Cents a Day! 
In a dim-lighted chamber a dying maiden lay, The tide of her pulses was ebbing fast away; In the flush of her youth she was worn with toil and care, And starvation showed its traces on the festures once so fair. 
cho: No more the work-bell calls the weary one, Rest, tired wage-slave, in your grave unknown; Your feet will no more tread life's thorny, rugged way, They have murdered you by inches upon thirty cents a day ! 
From earliest childhood she'd toiled to win her bread, In hunger and rags, oft she wished that she were dead; She knew naught of life's joys or the pleasures wealth can bring, Or the glory of the woodland in the merry days of spring. 
cho: 
By the rich she was tempted to eat the bread of shame, But her mother dear had taught her to value her good name; Mid want and starvation she waved temptation by, As she would not sell her honor she in poverty must die. 
cho: 
Too late, Christian ladies! You cannot save her now, She breathes out her life --- see the death-damp on her brow; Full soon she'll be sleeping beneath the churchyard clay, While you smile on those who killed her with thirty cents a day. 
cho: 
From American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century, Foner Note: A Knights of Labor Song: somewhere between 1865 and 1890, I'd guess. RG tune: Faded Coat of Blue