Getting Back to the FarmThe price of eggs and butter is soaring to the sky, Our milk is so expensive that we only take a gill And lest we drink too much at once we suck it through a quill. The cost of living is a theme that claims attention now, It even seems to have the bulge on Europe's family row; Our thoughts are turned from gas bombs and dirig- ible balloons While we ponder on the prospect of getting back to prunes. The men who guide the ship of state around the shoals and wrecks Are talking on the subject of causes and effects. They seek to find the trouble and the remedy apply That will keep the price of eatings from going up so high. They have juggled with statistics and performed a little sum And they tell us that production is completely on the bum, That the merchant and the banker and the printer and the clerk Must get out in the country and procure a job of work. They say the population now is drifting into town And there must be some reaction to keep the prices down; Yea, from the hill and housetop they are spreading the alarm, That the way to save the nation is to get back to the farm. Then farewell to the city with its glamor and its strife, I am going to seek some rural scene and lead the simple life. I want to be a farmer and with the farmer stand, With hayseed in my whiskers and a pitchfork in my hand. I will skiddoo back to nature and I'll buy a span of mules, A husking peg and hayrake and other farming tools. I will sow my fields in cabbage and when I thresh it out I will wreck the combination that controls our sour krout. I will plant the tiny hayseed and raise a crop of hay Perhaps I'll keep a hen that lays a dozen eggs a day; I'll wipe the sweat from off my brow and bare my strong right arm And you'll see the prices tumble when I get back to the farm. |
Verdigris Valley Verse
Albert Stroud
(Coffeyville, Kansas: The Journal Press. 1917)
Pages 74-75
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