O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God?

These lines come from Edwin Markham’s socially engaged poetry of the Progressive Era, written amid intense public debate over industrial capitalism, child labor, and brutal working conditions in mines and factories. Markham became nationally prominent for poems that condemned the human cost of modern industry and appealed to moral and religious conscience rather than partisan ideology. Addressing “masters, lords and rulers,” he speaks in the prophetic mode—an accusatory public address aimed at employers, political leaders, and social elites—asking them to answer before God for the suffering produced by the economic order they oversee.

The speaker indicts those with power for treating human beings as expendable. By framing the question as something “you give to God,” Markham invokes a higher tribunal than law or custom: divine judgment and moral accountability. The phrase “handiwork” suggests both the literal products of labor and the figurative “work” of building a society; the poem implies that a civilization built on exploitation is a blasphemous offering. The rhetorical question is meant to shame and awaken conscience, insisting that wealth and authority carry responsibility for the lives shaped—and damaged—by their decisions.