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Triangle Factory Fire

from Halfway Home by Misner & Smith

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about

Misner & Smith's first full length album, released in 2004 then re-recorded at Zone Recordings in Cotati, CA and re-released in 2011.
©&℗ 2004 and 2011 Misner & Smith/Scribble On The Wall Music. All Rights Reserved.

lyrics

Locked inside the factory thirteen hours a day
The foreman’s bent to break our backs, our Uncle takes our pay.
Sewing rows of velvet clothes for uptown girls to wear
Our tenement slums have become a city of despair.

Seven cents an hour, yes, and every dress that’s sewn
Will sell for more than all my bills and everything I own
Saw a dress I made hung up in a fancy store,
Reflections in the windows showed the ragged clothes I wore

Hope is broken, worries in my soul.
One more day, one more dollar in the hole.

My name’s Cecilia Walker and I’m twenty years of age.
I crossed the wide Atlantic for to find a living wage.
Factory work and servants chores were all that I could find.
This land of opportunity’s not what I had in mind.

Hours of sewing came and went, the work day almost done.
The objects of our labor all around us they were hung.
The owners never trusted us, “These immigrants”, they swore,
“Will steal any chance they get—that’s why we lock the doors.”

Hope is broken, worries in my soul.
One more day, one more dollar in the hole.

Flames broke out below us and soon they blocked the door,
The fire escapes were bolted shut on every single floor.
Kept my wits about me and the good Lord by my side,
But I still believe that luck’s the only reason I’m alive.

And though a hundred-fifty women died up in them flames
The owners felt—and the courts agreed—it wasn’t them to blame.
So Isaac Harris and Max Blank can go home to their wives
While a hundred dollar bill should cover each and every life.

Hope is broken, worries in my soul.
One more day, one more dollar in the hole.

Mr. Corporation sitting eighty stories high,
Got a briefcase full of dollar bills, sleeps with it at night.
Makes his whole damn living off of other people’s needs,
He’ll sell you his own hanging rope if profit’s to be made.

Hope is broken, worries in my soul.
One more day, one more dollar in the hole.

credits

from Halfway Home, released March 22, 2004
Sam Misner - Vocals and Acoustic Guitar
Megan Smith - Vocals, Upright Bass, and Mandolin
Engineered, mixed and mastered by Blair Hardman
Album Art by Damon Guthrie - sameteam.us

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Misner & Smith California

(my-zner) & smith
Northern California-based unclassifiable duo Misner & Smith treasure the unpredictability of their band. Technically precise songwriting mirrored with an improvisatory spirit and soaring harmonies are the hallmark of their sound. On their new album, "All is Song", they turn in their finest work to date, an album of inspired declarations to the power of music and song. ... more

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