Factory workers often created music that servd as a form of protest and a way to get them through the long hours of the workday. After reading the lyrics from the "Song of the Shirt", describe what life must have been like for these textile factory workers

The work in the factories is dead end, repetitive, dangerous work. The workers seemed suicidal, the lyrics portrays the workers as starving men and women who pray to god simply for bread that is "So dear" as if it was a much wanted car or house, not a necessity to human life.