Artist:
Si Kahn

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Photos: Earl Dotter. Click for pop-ups.

Bale opener.

Loom tender.

Louis Harrell with his retirement award from Stevens, shortly before his death.

Si Kahn wrote this song in 1976 for Louis Harrell, a 28-year retiree from J. P. Stevens.

Harrell died later at age 62 of byssinosis, or "brown lung," after years of inhaling dust generated in cotton manufacture. He had been the first president of the Carolina Brown Lung Association.

Brown lung -- a term coined by Ralph Nader -- occurs almost exclusively in cotton processing workers who handle raw cotton.

Typically in the early stages, symptoms show up on days when a worker has returned to the mill following a weekend or a day off. Hence the title of the song.

In the later stages tightness, coughing, and shortness of breath build. Patients can go for years in a weakened state until they die, usually of something else.

Byssinosis could have been recognized sooner. Health officials as far back as the 1930s were aware of the dangers of workers' prolonged exposure to cotton dust. Because it was able to control the outflow of health data, the cotton industry stalled acknowledgment of the disease for 50 years.

Finally in 1978 -- the year of Harrell's death -- OSHA imposed a protective standard on textile factories. It estimated that 35,000 people had the disease and 100,000 more were at risk.

Today cotton production and byssinosis are largely ended in the US. But both are common in the third world.

Si Kahn served as one of Harrell's pall-bearers.

Go To Work On Monday

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I did my part in World War Two
Got wounded for the nation.
Now my lungs are all shot down,
There ain't no compensation.
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
      one more time.

I'm gonna go to work on Monday
One more time, one more time,
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
One more time.

The doctor says I smoke too much.
He says that I'm not trying.
He says he don't know what I've got,
But we both know he's lying.
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
      one more time.

I'm gonna go to work on Monday. . .

The last time I went near my job
I thought my lungs were broken.
Chest bound down like iron bands,
I couldn't breathe for choking.
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
      one more time.

The politicians in this state,
They're nothing short of rotten.
They buy us off with fancy words
And sell us out to cotton.
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
      one more time.

The doctor says both lungs are gone,
There ain't no way to shake it.
But I can't live without the job,
Somehow I've got to take it.
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
      one more time.

They tell me I can't work at all,
There ain't no need of trying.
But living like some used up thing
Is just this short of dying.
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
      one more time.

Sitting on my front porch swing,
I'm like someone forgotten.
Head all filled with angry thoughts
And lungs filled up with cotton.
I'm gonna go to work on Monday
      one more time.

Personnel: Si Kahn, guitar, lead vocals; Annemarieke Coenders, harmony vocals; Linde Nijland, harmony vocals; Jesse Kahn, producer; Pieter Groenveld, engineer, producer; Jelke Haisma, mastering.

Si Kahn is the director of Grassroots Leadership and a member of AFM Local 1000.

Originally released in 1976, Go To Work On Monday was re-released in 1982, and re-recorded and re-released on Si's Thanksgiving CD in 2007, from which this performance was ripped. Purchase his music at sikahn.com.

Brown lung photos by Earl Dotter, from his book The Quiet Sickness.

The history of the cotton dust fight in the US is detailed by Charles Levenstein, Gregory DeLaurier, and Mary Lee Dunn: The Cotton Dust Papers.

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