Jim, I think that was Napoleon. " If I could write the country's songs, I care not who writes the country's laws", for sure a bad paraphrase.

Archie Green's book "Only a Miner" is one of the best index into the history of US striking coal miner's songs. Uncle Dave's "Buddy, Won't You Roll Down That Line" is a history lesson of itself.

There was this song from Southern Illinois that Alan Lomax railed after saying it was a fraud. It was published in an Illinois newspaper I think in the 20's. It's an anti-union coal mine song.

"Come and listen to my song, story of a nation wrong,
Idle men in a roving band strike the tools from a miner's hands.

Chorus: Flag of blue, white and red, a man's got a right to earn his bread.
Flag of blue, white and red, a man's got a right to earn his bread.

Tried to work 'cause I'm almost broke, to dig for Donnegan's Coal and Coke.
A hundred miners came around and beat me bloody to the ground.

Chorus:

John L's pay is big and fat, I wish I had a tenth of that.
I don't like to sit at home and hear the wife and children moan.

Chorus: