The gold links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
This poem is about social classes and how twisted they were in the 1800's and early 1900's. Cleghorn lived from 1876 to 1959 so we can assume this was the time period she was talking about. She joined the socialist party officially at 35, but had been working on labor issues independently before that. She continued as an activist against lynching, the death penalty, child labor, and more, until she died. This poem is the most well known that was written by her.
I found this poem extremely sad and eye opening to the extremes back in this time. How children were expected to work to bring home the little money they got for the dangerous and extreme jobs they did. While the men, who probably owned these 'mills', were selfishly out golfing and playing, without realizing the injustices they were contributing to. The children should be the ones at play, not the adults.
The rhyme scheme reminded me of a childrens song or poem, which is extremely ironic. It has a certain rhythm that makes you ignore the words and just notice the sounds, like the people who turned their backs on the child labor abuse going on during this time and acted like everything was good and happy.
You've done a nice job on this one. I think you see the injustice she was trying to address.
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