Hard Times in Coleman's Mines, song lyrics

Song: Hard Times in Coleman's Mines
Lyrics: Aunt Molly Jackson⁽¹⁾

Music: Aunt Molly Jackson
Year: circa 1939
Genre: Folk
Country: USA

You sit down for breakfast and all you have to eat
Is cornbread and bulldog gravy without a bit of meat.

CHORUS:
It's a hard time in old Coleman's mines.
A hard time poor boy.

In the summertime you live on cornbread and wild greens;
In the wintertime you live on cornbread and pinto beans.
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
(CHORUS)

You go in the mines and work all day without a bit to eat
Without a pair of pants to wear, no shoes upon your feet.

(CHORUS)

When you're asked about leaving this is what you say:
"We're so darn poor and ragged we can never get away."

(CHORUS)

You're all ragged and hungry, wearied and blue
And I'm so digusted that I don't know what to do.
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
(CHORUS)

Well, I will do the best I can and do you do what you like
But you'd better all get together boys, and come out on a strike.

(CHORUS)

Strike for union conditions, boys, say seventy cents a ton.
Stick together like big brothers, boys, till a victory you have won.

It's a hard times in thes old mines.
A hard time, I know.

Notes:

Aunt Molly Jackson (1880-1960), in the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, University of Tennessee Press