They tramp there in their legions on the mornings dark and cold.
To beg the right to slave for bread from Sydney's lords of gold :
They toil and sweat in slavery, 'twould make the Devil smile,
To see the Sydney wharfies tramping the hungry mile.
On ships from all the seas they toil, that others of their kind.
May never know the pinch of want nor feel the misery blind :
That makes the lives of men a hell in those conditions vile :
That are the hopeless lot of those who tramp the hungry mile.
The slaves of men who know no thought of anything but gain.
Who wring their brutal profits from the blood and sweat and pain ;
Of all the disinherited that slave and starve the while
Upon the ships beside the wharves, along the hungry mile.
But every stroke or that grim lash, that sears the soul of men.
With interest due from years gone by shall be paid back again :
To those who drive these wretched slaves to build the golden pile.
And blood shall blot the memory out--of Sydney's hungry mile.
The day will come, aye, come it must, when these same slaves shall rise,
And through the revolution's smoke, ascending to the skies,
The master's fare shell show the fear he hides behind his smile.
Of these, his slaves, who on that day shall storm the hungry mile.
And when world grows wiser and all men at last are free.
When none shall feel the hunger nor tramp in misery.
To the right to slave for bread, the children then may smile,
At those strange tales they tell of what was once the hungry mile.
NO. 2701 W. W. F. of A.
Paddington.
Notes
W. W. F. of A. is the Waterside Workers of Australia and this famous poem was the work of the restless waterside worker Ernest Antony who published his slim poetry book under the title "The Hungry Mile." The Hungry Mile is commemorated in the Rocks area of Sydney with a road sign.From the NSW Newspaper The Labor Daily 14 Dec 1912 p. 1.
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