What's A Man? by Emmett Doyle

D G D
What’s a man when the pay of each dawning day
A D
is to toil to live to toil?
G D
Or to end his time in the mill or the mine
A Bm
To be laid to his rest in the soil?
D G D
Be a man- pull the the plough by the sweat of your brow
G A
and the foreman’s deathly creed
G D
what’s a man but a tool for another’s gain
A D
to be broke for another’s greed?

What’s a man when the drums beat the soldier’s hum
For the will of the great and the grand
to be marched to the fold by threat or by gold
And to paint his blood on the sand
Be a man as you’re fed to the martyred dead
Or you carry the hero’s shame
What’s a man but a gun in another’s hand
To be shot in another’s name?

What’s a man when he roams without hearth and home
Dispossessed of the earth to dwell
and there’s no door open to let him in
but the door of the prison cell?
Be a man, be a man, don’t reach out for a hand
Be a man if you’d earn your fill
Then what’s a man but a beast in another’s cage
To be beat to another’s will?

No, I won’t be the man that carries a gun
To conquer the distant land
And I won’t by the man who dies for your greed
Or the man who can’t ask for a hand
But I’ll fight- with my brothers and sisters unite
And we’ll tumble the master’s crown
For what’s a woman or a man but a mind, heart, and hand
When we’ve torn our fetters down?