Discusses the genesis of a (lost) poem by Henry Lawson, 'Mothers o' Men'. Written beween July and September 1903, while Lawson was separating from his wife and lived in Manly, the poem was recited by Mrs Hamilton-Grey, who campaigned against a new Children's Protection Bill, to a large audience at the School of Arts on 21 September 1903. Topical and popular as the poem seems to have been, it was never published.