Still working on recording this one

Image:  Tubercular wife and daughter of agricultural day laborer. She had lost six of her eight children and the remaining two were pitifully thin. The mother said that she had tuberculosis because she had always gone back to the fields to work within two or three days after her children were born. Shack home is on Poteau Creek near Spiro, Oklahoma  U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information LC-USF34- 033601-D

Lyrics:

The wages of sin
Are gilding the lily
In backrooms that poor folk aren’t privy to see

The wages of sin
Are feathering nests sir
Behind guards and gates shut against you and me

The wages of sin
In the Devil’s own ledger
Sum up what bosses suck out of what workers put in

Gleeful bankers and bosses
Pile their loot to inspect
Without a care for the blood and tears spilt to collect
The wages of sin

Through force fraud and failure
To do justice to all
By the crony, the grifter, and the back-pocket pol
By a sweetheart deal
Or the company store
Anything to squeeze working folks a bit more

The wages of sin
Are death on the prairies
And in boweries and small towns across this hard land
Turning factories and farms
Into cemeteries
In the name of almighty “Supply and Demand”
For a hungry hollow eyed kid
Or a desperate young mother
Or a homeless heartbroken shell of a man

The wages of sin
Ought to be a down payment
On the day debits and credits are squared up and true
And the rich and their lackeys
Are called to account
And the poor man lays claim to what the poor man is due