Standard (EADGBE)

 It was early springtime when the strike was on

 They drove us miners out of doors

 Out from the houses that the company owned

 We moved into tents up at old Ludlow

I was worried bad about my children

Soldiers guarding the railroad bridge

Every once in a while a bullet would fly

Kick up gravel under our feet

We were so afraid you’d kill our children

Dug us a cave that was seven foot deep

Carried our young ones and a pregnant women

Down inside the cave to sleep

That very night you soldiers waited

‘Till all us miners was a sleep

You snuck around our little tent town

Soaked our tents with your kerosene

You struck a match and the blaze it started

You pulled the triggers of your Gatling guns

I made a run for the children but the firewall stopped me

Thirteen children died from your gun

I carried my blanket to a wire-fence corner

Watched the fire ‘till the blaze died down

I helped some people drag their belongings

While your bullets killed us all around

I never will forget the look on the faces

Of the men and women on that awful day

When we stood around to preach their funeral

And lay the corpses of the dead away

We told the Colorado governor to phone the president

Tell him call off his national guard

But the national guard belonged to the governor

So he didn’t try so very hard

Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes

Up to Wallensburg in a little cart

They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back

And they put a gun in every hand

The state soldiers jumped us in the wire-fence corners

Did not know that we had these guns

And the redneck miners mowed down them troopers

You should of seen them poor boys run

We took some cement and walled the cave up

Where you killed these thirteen children inside

I said, “God bless the mine workers’ union”

And I hung my head and cried