The Flood and the Storm Songtext

von Woody Guthrie

The year is nineteen and twenty, kind friends,
And the great World's War we have won.
Old Kaiser Bill, we've beat him once again
In the smoke of the cannon and the gun.
Old von Hindenburg and his Royal German Army,
They are tramps in tatters and in rags.
Uncle Sammy has tied every nation in this world
In his long old leather money bags.

Wilson caught a trip and a train into Paris,
Meetin' Lloyd George and Mr. Clemenceau.
They said to Mr. Wilson, "We've staked all of our claims,
There is nothing else for you."

"I plowed more lands, I built bigger fact'ries,
An' I stopped Hindenburg in his tracks.
You thank the Yanks by claimin' all the lands,
But you still owe your money to my bank."

"Keep sending your ships across these waters;
We'll borrow all the money you can lend.
We must buy new clothes, new plows, and fact'ries,
And we need golden dollars for to spend."

Ever' dollar in the world, well, it rolled and it rolled,
And it rolled into Uncle Sammy's door.
A few got richer, and richer, and richer,
But the poor folks kept but gettin' poor.

Well, the workers in the world did fight a revolution
To chase out the gamblers from their land.
Farmers, an' peasants, an' workers in the city
Fought together on their five-year plans.

The soul and the spirit of the workers' revolution
Spread across ever' nation in this world;
From Italy to China, to Europe and to India,
An' the blood of the workers it did spill.

This spirit split the wind to Boston, Massachussetts,
With Coolidge on the Governor's chair.
Troopers an' soldiers, the guards and the spies
Fought the workers that brought the spirit there.

Sacco and Vanzetti had preached to the workers,
They was carried up to Old Judge Thayer.
They was charged with killin' the payroll guards,
And they died in the Charlestown chair.

Well, the world shook harder on the night they died,
Than 'twas shaken by that great World War.
More millions did march for Sacco and Vanzetti
Than did march for the great war lords.

Well, the peasants, the farmers, the towns and the cities,
An' the hills and the valleys they did ring.
Hindenburg an' Wilson, an' Harding, Hoover, Coolidge,
Never heard this many voices sing.

The zigzag lightning, the rumbles of the thunder,
And the singing of the clouds blowing by,
The flood and the storm for Sacco and Vanzetti
Caused the rich man to pull his hair and cry.