Two Good Men

(album: Ballads Of Sacco & Vanzetti - 1960)

Two good men a long time gone
Two good men a long time gone
(Two good men a long time gone, oh, gone)
Sacco, Vanzetti a long time gone
Left me here to sing this song

Say, there, did you hear the news?
Sacco worked at trimming shoes
Vanzetti was a peddling man
Pushed his fish cart with his hands

Sacco was born across the sea
Somewhere over in Italy
Vanzetti was born of parents fine
Drank the best Italian wine

Sacco sailed the sea one day
Landed up in Boston Bay
Vanzetti sailed the ocean blue
Landed up in Boston, too

Sacco's wife three children had
Sacco was a family man
Vanzetti was a dreaming man
His book was always in his hand

Sacco earned his bread and butter
Being the factory's best shoe cutter
Vanzetti spoke both day and night
Told the workers how to fight

I'll tell you if you ask me
'Bout this payroll robbery
Two clerks was killed by the shoe factory
On the street in South Braintree

Judge Thayer told his friends around
He would cut the radicals down
Anarchist bastards was the name
Judge Thayer called these two good men

I'll tell you the prosecutors' names
Katsman, Adams, Williams, Kane
The judge and lawyers strutted down
They done more tricks than circus clowns

Vanzetti docked here in 1908
He slept along the dirty streets
He told the workers "Organize"
And on the electric chair he dies

All you people ought to be like me
And work like Sacco and Vanzetti
And every day find some ways to fight
On the union side for workers' rights

I've got no time to tell this tale
The dicks and bulls are on my trail
But I'll remember these two good men
That died to show me how to live

All you people in Suassos Lane
Sing this song and sing it plain
All you folks that's coming along
Jump in with me, and sing this song