Hundreds of men would lose their lives toīig Bend before it was over, their bodies piled into makeshift, sandy graves Was negligible and the air inside the developing tunnel was thick with Their drills through it, through its belly. Man always had a partner, known as a shaker or turner, who would crouchĬlose to the hole and rotate the drill after each blow.Īlong quickly, until Big Bend Mountain emerged to block its path. Steel drivers, also known as a hammer man, would spend their workdaysĭriving holes into rock by hitting thick steel drills or spikes. John Henry was hired as a steel-driver for the C&O Railroad, a wealthyĬompany that was extending its line from the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio Mostly in deplorable conditions and for poor wages. Rights on blacks, sending thousands upon thousands of men into the workforce, The war conferred equal civil and political The period became knownĪs the Reconstruction, a reunion of the nation under one government after Whose territory had been ravaged by the Civil War. He carried a beautifulīaritone voice, and was a favorite banjo player to all who knew him.įreed from the war, John Henry went to work rebuilding the Southern states He had an immenseĪppetite, and an even greater capacity for work. To stand 6 feet tall, 200 pounds - a giant in that day. Recorded at Mississippi's Parchman Farm in the late 1940s to present-dayīorn a slave in the 1840s or 1850s in North Carolina or Virginia. Spanning a century of generations with versions ranging from prisoners Through ballads and work songs, traveled from coast to coast as the railroadsĭrove west during the 19th Century. Musicians - who have studied, sung and recorded it over the years.
#Johnny works on railroad story professional#
The railroads after the Civil War, and died in his 30s, leaving behindĪs varied as the thousands of people - menial workers, scholars, professional He was born a slave, worked as a laborer for He worked the rails for nine years without ever making a mistake-evidence that perfectionism may be more than just a human condition.The actual man and the legend surrounding him. Jack passed away in 1890, after developing tuberculosis. Jack was reportedly given an official employment number, and was paid 20 cents a day and half a bottle of beer weekly. The baboon’s arms round his master’s neck, the other stroking Wide’s face.”
As I drew near they were both sitting on the trolley.
“It was very touching to see his fondness for his master. Howe, who visited the baboon sometime around 1890. “Jack knows the signal whistle as well as I do, also every one of the levers,” wrote railway superintendent George B. Rather than fire Wide, the railway managers decided to resolve the complaint by testing the baboon’s abilities. According to The Railway Signal, Wide “trained the baboon to such perfection that he was able to sit in his cabin stuffing birds, etc., while the animal, which was chained up outside, pulled all the levers and points.”Īs the story goes, one day a posh train passenger staring out the window saw that a baboon, and not a human, was manning the gears and complained to railway authorities. Soon, Wide was able to kick back and relax as his furry helper did all of the work switching the rails. By watching his owner, Jack picked up the pattern and started tugging on the levers himself. As trains approached the rail switches at the Uitenhage train station, they’d toot their whistle a specific number of times to alert the signalman which tracks to change. Soon, Jack was also helping with household chores, sweeping floors and taking out the trash.īut the signal box is where Jack truly shined. So the first thing he trained the primate to do was push him to and from work in a small trolley. Years earlier, he had lost both his legs in a work accident, which made his half-mile commute to the train station extremely difficult for him. Impressed by the primate’s skills, Wide bought him, named him Jack, and made him his pet and personal assistant. One day in the 1880s, a peg-legged railway signalman named James Edwin Wide was visiting a buzzing South African market when he witnessed something surreal: A chacma baboon driving an oxcart.
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