John Henry, and other rail songs

Posted by John Crandall Apr 10, 2007

Building railroads was back breaking work. Hard work for thousands of Americans in the golden age of rail. Songs like John Henry, I've been Workin' on the Railroad, and more remeber these men and their lives and work.

"John Henry" is an especially loved rail ballad because it not only commemorates rail laborers (John Henry was a Hammerman), but his race against the steam shovel (or drill) also remembers how workers faced with losing their jobs to mechanization felt. John Henry might have outrun the steam shovel, but he burst his heart and died in the effort. Not many today can fully appreciate that kind of effort, or the pride working men felt in this legend. Working yourself to death is a cliche today, often used sarcastically, but for men who identified with John Henry his was a valiant effort to validate the work of their lives even if only in the spirit.

"I've Been Workin' on the Railroad" is another song that brings home both the pride of hard work and a sense of the commaraderie of rail crews who traveled with the newly laid rails living and eating together in camps ever on the move. Rail labororers were from a variety of groups, but Irish immigrants in the east, and Chinese immigrants in the west are especially rmembered from the time when the first transcontinental tracks were laid. As everybody knows they met at Promontory Point Utah, but fewer remember that there were still thousands of miles of spur lines to be laid, and men continued working on the railroad all the live long day for decades afterward.