Landlord - David Rovics

The patroons came from Holland to America

Became landlords where none had been before

Soon one man owned half a million acres

On both sides of the Hudson River shore

He invited families to move in and give him thirty percent

Of everything they grew each year, this is how they’d pay the rent

His name was Rensselaer

He became one of the richest men on Earth

In today’s terms ninety billion dollars

Is how much he’d be worth

All this for doing nothing but saying all of this was his

«I have the power of the state behind me and I’m in the landlord biz»

After two hundred years of this and one revolution won

Another Rennsalaer had another son

And this Rennsalaer was greedier than his ancestors dead and passed

It was now the 1840's and things started changing fast

It was the straw that broke the back, the bottle was uncorked

They started organizing meetings, the tenant farmers of New York

They found the strength of numbers, they found the power of suggestion

They found each other asking the same question

Who gave you the right to be a landlord

To live a life of ease while others toil

Who gave you the right to be a rich man

While the rest of us pay you so that we can work this soil

They vowed that they would stop the rent collection

They vowed they’d bring this madness to an end

And when one blew the tin horn of distress

They’d soon find they had a thousand friends

Dressed in calico skirts with masks upon their faces, on horseback,

armed with knives and guns

They chanted and they yelled, they kept their farms, and they kept the sheriffs

on the run

They asked…

Who gave you the right to be a landlord

To live a life of ease while others toil

Who gave you the right to be a rich man

While the rest of us pay you so that we can work this soil

The governor passed laws to try to stop them

But nothing could be done to break their will

And by 1848 the landlords buckled and sold their holdings to the farmers in the

hills

Yes, they overthrew this feudal system

But it’s replaced now by speculators and banks

And you can still hear the homeless families asking of all the landed gentry in

our ranks