Westbound train from DC
Slept right through the night
Woke up in Ohio
With the early specs of light
There's ghost towns on this railway
Right off to the side
There's a million empty houses
The place where a city died
Clinton wasn't the first one
To take the jobs away
Riding the train through Gary
The remnants still remain
The rusty broken factories
The streets just barley paved
Reality is nothing like
The promises they made
They told us all of progress
That soon it would reverse
It's been too many years now,
And it's only getting worse
The steel plant pumps the smoke out
Skeletons walk the road
The Amtrak doesn't stop here
But it runs by pretty slow
All these towns are gone now
They only keep their names
And looking further eastward, yeah
It only stays the same
From Illinois to Maryland
The poverty has spread
Left the pockets of the poor all filled
With caps of heroin
The streets are busy with the self-employed
They sling and sing for change
The only things left running
Are the sirens and the trains
They told us all of progress
That soon it would reverse
It's been too many years now,
And it's only getting worse
They call this place the Rust Belt
This length of broken homes
Where the exploitation of working people
Started long ago
It's so far from the glamor
Yet so close to the fame
But the only it's known for
Is it's tolerance of pain
Looking back on history,
We we're always underpaid
It's a testing ground for a system based
On unrestricted trade
First you give employment
Then you build up trust
Then you flee with the profits
And leave the rest to rust
They told us all of progress
That soon it would reverse
It's been too many years now,
And it's only getting worse