Carl Sandburg And The Common People
Carl Sandburg and the Common People
In his poem, "I Am the People, the Mob," Carl Sandburg explored the problems of social justice and equality among the working men, women, and children in nineteen hundred sixteen:
I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
Sandburg knew the important work in this world was done by common men, women and children.
According to Penelope Niven the years between 1905 to1920 Carl Sandburg was active in radical politics. She states that "as a son of immigrants, he could criticize the failures of the American dream and still approve its possibilities, within the structure of the American political system" (115). When he formally joined the socialist movement, he chose the right wing Social-Democrats of Wisconsin. This movement pledged to the orderly inclusion of their reforms, through the ballot box. The Wisconsin socialists were highly organized and determined to achieve their programs with electoral support. Sandburg envisioned a society that reformed the government, eliminated corrupt power, prohibited child labor; women's right to vote, and urban renewal. He wanted free medical care for the unemployed, workman's compensation, higher wages and shorter hours for working people, better living and working conditions for everyone. Sandburg had traveled throughout the world and had been an eyewitness to many different social reforms:
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but...
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