You don't know what hard times are, daddy

Hard times are when the textile workers

around this country are out of work

They got four or five kids and can't pay their wages

can't buy their food

Hard times are when the auto workers are

out of work and they tell 'em go home

And hard times are when a man has worked

at a job thirty years, thirty years

They give him a watch, kick him in the butt

And say, "Hey, a computer took your place, daddy"

This place don't smell like Winston's and whiskey no more

Thе feet don't creep and creak the

hard oak of a harmonious floor

And Grandma's old garden ain't what it usеd to be

There's rats on tomatoes and holes in the leaves

Fell in the yard where Granddad parked his car

Before driving us to drive-ins and breaking our hearts

Them quarters quit coming, that engine quit running

And that truck just stayed sitting

with six kids in the kitchen

Even though he was well-trained, well-read, and worked hard

The robot killed the working man

Took the nail and hammer right out of his hands

Sealed up the coffin, sold off the land

Replaced the good book with machines in their hands

Sooner or later, more soon than not

Them homegrown tomatoes all ripe and then rot

With no rhyme or reason, no helping hand

The day the robot killed the working man

And this place don't look like what

it looked like when I was a kid

Can't you see what a giant step for humanity did?

And all of them calluses for palaces built in the sky, boy

Mean nothing to the machine on

the day the working man dies, boy

The robot killed the working man

Took the nail and hammer right out of his hands

Sealed up the coffin, sold off the land

Replaced the good book with machines in their hands

Sooner or later, more soon than not

Them homegrown tomatoes all ripe and then rot

With no rhyme or reason, no protest to stand

The day the robot killed the working man

And brick by brick, them Mullen boys built this town

And brick by brick, them bastards keep tearing me down

There's no one to be angry at every time a working man falls

Just more ads for gambling and more ads for more of it all

The robot killed the working man

Took the nail and hammer right out of his hands

Sealed up the coffin, sold off the land

Replaced the good book with machines in their hands

Sooner or later, more soon than not

Them homegrown tomatoes all ripe and then rot

With no rhyme or reason, no helping hand

The day the robot killed the working man