We're really doing the good work now,

Nobody anymore labors behind the plow.

The land has been stolen and put to another use,

For the mountaintop miners have now been turned loose.

So much dynamite in this state is used,

That the people here are feeling the blues.

The West Virginia hills, so great and so grand,

Now have been blasted to No Man's land.

We used to breathe gas from the mule's behind,

And the furrows on the hillside were the definite sign.

The days of yore, of working the land,

Have been replaced by the coal company man.

He'll huff and he'll puff and blow your house down,

And if he makes a bad shot he might even frown.

Lives are disrupted, there is no doubt,

But what's a little pain in the coal man's rout.

Carpetbaggers from Virginia and places in between,

Scalawags already here to sweep the state clean.

"There are riches to be made: Boys make haste,

Before this whole thing blows up in our face."

We all know that the coal man's clever,

That money's the key to his endeavor.

He spends a million to paint his signs,

And another million to change our minds.

But the smoke will clear and the people will see,

Even those that waited for the big monee.

That things are not right; everything is wrong,

Because they sat on their asses and waited to long.

Richard A. Bradford
Edwight, W.Va.