{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/john-hancock-otis",
 "title": "John Hancock Otis",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edgar Lee Masters",
 "poet_slug": "edgar-lee-masters",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Spoon River Anthology",
 "book_slug": "spoon-river-anthology",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 118,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1916,
  "venue": "Spoon River Anthology (1916)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edgar-lee-masters_spoon-river-anthology",
  "file": "spoon-river-anthology.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://web.archive.org/web/20080723131115/http://spoonriveranthology.net/spoon/river/originalOrder/",
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 19,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "As to democracy, fellow citizens,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are you not prepared to admit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was second to none in Spoon River",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Born in a shanty and beginning life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a water carrier to the section hands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the superintendency of the railroad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Living in Chicago,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was a veritable slave driver,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grinding the faces of labor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a bitter enemy of democracy.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I say to you, Spoon River,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to you, O republic,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beware of the man who rises to power",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From one suspender.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}