BIG BOY Skirt turned you down Because you worked in a steel mill? Told it over town, Gave you the gate, laughed fit to kill? Hell, what do you expect? You can’t help that, big boy! Burns on your eye, On your arms, your chest, your hands? Goin’ to cry? Them things an open hearth feller stands. Damn, snap to, you, buck up. Make the best of it, big boy! Can’t stand the work? Back sore, shovel handle cuts like a knife? How can you shirk? You got to eat, ain’t you, in this dirty life? Hell, swing on to that hammer. Put your back into it, big boy!Hop on a freight? Go some place where a man’s got a chance? That ain’t your fate! Weak head, strong back, and you got on pants. Why, you’re as dumb as me! What else can you do, big boy? Wish you could die, Wish ‘twas pneumonia ‘stead of smoke has got you to coughin’? Wish you could lie Under the ground in a varnished pine coffin? Christ, you wish you was dead? Huh, you ain’t got nothin’ on me, big boy! Ensley Steel Works, 1924