Three Ghosts
Three Ghosts - meaning Summary
Collective Slogan, Forgotten Names
Sandburg sketches anonymous working-class tailors who proclaim collective solidarity yet fade into oblivion. The poem contrasts their earnest, comradely talk and ritual drinking for "The People" with the erasure of individual names, turning pride into a “joke in ghosts.” It compresses labor, camaraderie, and the irony of political slogans that survive while the real people who spoke them are forgotten, leaving only a haunting, residual phrase.
Read Complete AnalysesTHREE tailors of Tooley Street wrote: We, the People. The names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts. Cutters or bushelmen or armhole basters, they sat cross-legged stitching, snatched at scissors, stole each other thimbles. Cross-legged, working for wages, joking each other as misfits cut from the cloth of a Master Tailor, they sat and spoke their thoughts of the glory of The People, they met after work and drank beer to The People. Faded off into the twilights the names are forgotten. It is a joke in ghosts. Let it ride. They wrote: We, The People.
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