Once I built a railroad, now it’s done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” is a song written during the Great Depression, with lyrics by E. Y. “Yip” Harburg and music by Jay Gorney. It was published and popularized in 1932, becoming an emblematic lament of unemployed workers and disillusioned veterans. The quoted lines come from a verse in which the speaker recalls having helped build the nation’s infrastructure (“built a railroad”) and then being cast aside when the work ends, reduced to begging. The song’s bitter contrast between past contribution and present destitution resonated amid mass unemployment, breadlines, and widespread economic collapse in the early 1930s United States.

The couplet compresses the song’s central irony: the speaker once performed heroic, nation-building labor, yet society offers no security or dignity when the boom ends. “Once I built a railroad” evokes the myth of American progress and the worker as builder of modernity; “now it’s done” signals both completion and disposability. The plea “Brother, can you spare a dime?” turns from pride to humiliation, addressing fellow citizens as “brother” to insist on shared obligation rather than charity. Harburg’s lyric critiques an economic system that celebrates labor in prosperity but abandons laborers in crisis, making the dime a symbol of both need and moral indictment.