Скачать или смотреть Which Side Are You On? lyrics by Florence Reece

Lyrics are below. The coal mines of Harlan County, Kentucky were very isolated places in the early 1930's. The mining company controlled every aspect of the towns. It decided when the miners would work, it owned the houses workers lived in, and even payed its employees in scrip which could only be used at its company store. Workers had no voice in their community affairs, working conditions, or pay. If they were treated unfairly they had nowhere to turn because the company owned the police force in the town as well. 

Powerless workers began to organize and form unions. The 1920s and 1930s were the decades of the worst labor problems in Kentucky coal mines. Coal mine owners refused to employ unionized miners, firing union miners and evicting them from company housing. Union organizers were run out of company towns and beaten by mine guards, in many cases with the backing of the sheriff.

In 1931, J. H. Blair's deputies, hired by the mining company, illegally entered the home of Sam Reece, a Union organizer. Sam had been warned ahead of time and managed to escape, but the deputies proceeded to terrorize his children and wife Florence in his place. After the men had gone, a furious Florence wrote the lyrics to “Which Side Are You On” on a calendar that hung in the kitchen of her home. She later set the words to a traditional Baptist hymn, “Lay the Lilly Low” and recorded the song. While this song was written during the time of coal mining unionization, it is a timeless song that also speaks to our modern day as workers join together to protest working conditions and pay.

Watch Florence Reece herself at a 1973 coal miner's union rally singing her own song here:    • Florence Reece segment from Harlan County,...  

Which side are you on lyrics:
(Note: a scab is a non-union worker who crosses picket lines to work)

Come all of you good workers, good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union, has come in here to dwell

Chorus:
Which side are you on? Which side are you on?
Which side are you on? Which side are you on?

My daddy was a miner, and I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union, till every battle's won.

They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man, or a thug for J.H. Blair.

Oh, workers can you stand it? Please, tell me how you can!
So will you be a lousy scab, or will you be a man?

So don't scab for the bosses, don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance, unless we organize.

So shoulder to shoulder, in union we shall stand
We’ll beat the bosses and the scabs, so come and lend a hand.

Come all of you good people, you women and you men
Once more our backs are to the wall, under attack again.

We’ve fought a million battles, to defend our hard won rights
We’re going to have to fight again, and I ask you here tonight.

It’s time for a decision, and you really have to choose
Support the one big union, or the next in line is you.