July 30, 2026 • 35 mins
For well over a century, schoolchildren across the United States learned the story of John Henry. According to the legend, John was a formerly enslaved man who found work with a railroad after the Civil War. Widely known as the best steel driver in the area, John wins a Phyrric victory against an automated steel driving machine -- he beats the machine, but dies as a result of exhaustion. The story has resurged in popularity as modern society squares off against AI... but how much of the original story is fact, and how much is fiction? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max continue their exploration of American folklore by diving into the tale of John Henry. And, quickly, things go off the rails.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians, choo too. Thank you as
always so much for tuning in. For super producer mister
Max Williams. Chug a chugga.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Higher locomotive guys, Ben, that's you. I'm no, I did
I do dig trains. I don't know what it is.
There's something in the mind of the young boy that
just makes you predisposed to digging machines. But I've mentioned
multiple times, Ben, as i've got a little older, I've
even first they're kind of gone down the rabbit hole
(01:02):
of engineering and you know, clockwork stuff. I mean, I
think you and I are both a little bit into
watches and all of that stuff these days. But yeah,
I get it, man, trains, locomote is all the moving parts,
the engineering of it all.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's no Brown. I've been bullying
where We've got to mention one thing at the top
of Max. I don't want to put you on the
spot too much.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Max.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Not too long ago, Max, Max Williams, you and I
got involved in some pretty cool conversations about model trains
which you were. Pater Familius is a big fan of Oh.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, he's a mild train collector.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
He loves it by the way, that means fare right, yes,
cool google, or like patriarchical gout it. We had a
episode back in twenty twenty four March twenty twenty four
called back to the Choo.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I'm not going to try this one vent. We had
an episode about model trains, back to the Tuture.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
You know who else is really in the Monel trans
two people? Sebastian Bach from skid Row. There is an
episode of Trailer Park Boys where he is featured and
Neil Young. But I also just found out something else
interesting about Sebastian Bach. He briefly was in a Broadway
production of Jesus Christ Superstar and he got fired because
(02:22):
he was horrible.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
He did the skid Row scream.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I thought you were gonna say he just kept going
to his trailer to play with train trailer.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, no, apparently I saw. You can find clips of
it if you want.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I was blissfully unaware of this, and it is fascinating
because he looks like he is in a very different
production than the rest of the cast.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Let's just leave it there.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Another thing that a lot of us are blissfully unaware
of in American society today is this house Yon era
of tall tales, larger than life American heroes from folklore
andrely guys. Remember we did a deep dive into a
(03:05):
heartwarming i'll call him thoroughly eccentric dude called Johnny Appleseed
or John Chapman.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Hmm. And I think we mentioned in that episode the
Disney shorts that featured a lot of these folks, and
there actually was a John Henry one that it came
a good bit later. The Johnny Appleseed one is quite
a bit older. But I believe the Walt Disney Animation
Studio released a short film detailing the myth, the urban legend,
(03:35):
the folkloric tale of John Henry the Steel Driving Man,
back in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That is correct, and today we are tackling another story.
This is important to me. I think it's important to
all of us in the West especially. It's a story
that only grows more relevant as Americans and the world
overall grow increasingly concerned about the implications and consequences of
(04:03):
l m's AI and automation. It's the legend of John Henry,
most famous to a lot of grade school kids for
a ballad, and Nola, we're okay with it. I'd love
to share just a snippet of a version of this song.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Oh, surely it's in the public domain at this point.
Let's do it. When John Henry was a little baby boy,
you get hold him in the bomb of your hand.
He gave a long and lost man. What does it
(04:46):
mean to be a steel driving man? Ben? What does
it mean?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Ah? Yes, yes, this is a great question, which that's
one of the questions we can solve in today's episode, Nolan.
But we may not be able to solve all of
the questions about the legend of John Henry. As we'll see,
there's a mystery afoot, or, if you prefer, fellow ridiculous historians,
a mystery on the rails. What say we start with
(05:12):
the legend.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I certainly heard this tale when I was a youth
in primary school, though it may be something that has been,
you know, moved away from a little bit in modern times.
Not one hundred percent sure, I couldn't say, but it
seems like that's entirely likely, because I don't think that
a lot of the younger generation know much about John Henry,
the steel driving man. So according to the tale, he
(05:41):
was born a slave in eighteen forty.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
It was freed after the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
John then found work as a steel driver for the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. So I believe been a
steel driver is someone that hammers the kind of I
guess you could call them supports field sort of railroad
ties right into solid rock.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Well, they're not the same as the ties.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
These are more for like building out the tunnels that
the trains would go into. So these would be like
having to hammer steal into the solid rock to help
build the supports for the railroads, you know, for hollowing
out these tunnels and mountains.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, you hollow out the tunnels by hammering into the rock,
creating a cavity wherein explosives of some sort are inserted,
which blows up more space right into whatever you're trying
to delve through. And then you move forward a little
bit at a time in these harsh weather conditions, and
(06:41):
then you blow it up again, and then you do
it again and again, add nauseum, until you get through
the mountain. And our buddy John Henry is widely renowned,
according to the legend, as the strongest, most efficient, best,
gosh darned steel driver in all the area. We do
have to mention that in real life steel driving at
(07:05):
this time in the eighteen hundreds, you're working in two
man teams. Like how a sniper as a spotter. If
you're a steel driver, you've got the hammer, but you've
got a second guy called the shaker, and they are
I feel like they don't get enough praise because they
have to crouch pretty close to the hole with a
little chisel and turn the drill after each time the
(07:29):
hammer blows. So it's like if you have ever folks,
if you've ever used hammers and carpentry or something like that,
you know you have to have one hand holding the
nail or a hair comb if you want to do
a smart trick, right, and then you got the other
your thumb if you're not careful, right, right. So think
of each member of the team as one of the hands. Right,
(07:51):
John Henry is the hand, but the hammer, the shaker
is the hand kind of holding the nail for our purposes. Uh,
it's it's huge work. The railroad that you mentioned there,
the cno is moving a log chew chewing along, but
they have a big problem ahead. According to the legend,
(08:12):
they have a mountain in West Virginia called the Big
Bend Mountain, and it's too large for them to go around,
so the only way out is through. They have to
blast blast the tunnel into something like one in a
fourth miles of solid rock one.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
As you can imagine, this was dangerous work. This one
in particular, led it to a significant number of fatalities.
Nearly a thousand men died over the three years it
took to complete the project. John Henry, however, was resilient
af and survived all the while swinging a fourteen pound hammer.
(08:53):
He apparently could accomplish around ten to twelve feet of
pounding each day on his own. And and Ben I
was something was kind of ringing a bell, and I
was like, why am I thinking of Shaquille O'Neal uh here?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And it is because he played the character Steele in.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
The movie version of the Marvel character Steele, whose name
as a civilian was John Henry. Steele not meant to
be John Henry himself, but inspired by I mean, he
was meant to be, like I believe, like a really
talented weapons smith and designer.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh that's crazy. I always thought that man. I always
thought Steele was a reference to d C comics.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
It is DC. Okay, yeah, same character, but yeah, DC.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And And it's clearly like that's a great point because
it shows us how how brasilient this myth is even
in the modern day. So, according to the legend, on
to stage, as they're hammering through this fountain, strolls an
unidentified salesman and he's just like the guy I selling
(10:00):
monoails to Springfield from that legendary Simpsons episode. He's a
slick cat, his hair's pushed back, and he says, I've
got a solution. I've got an automated steam powered drill
that can outperform any living man.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yikes.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Not good news for the steel driving men of the world.
This is quite controversial. So there is a.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Contest of sorts is organized.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
John Henry being the top steel driver in the human race,
it would seem, at least in the region, was to
be pitted against this device. This this drill man versus machine.
The foreman would run the drill and John Henry, dual
wielding two twenty pound hammers, would try to compete with
(10:51):
it on his own and seeing who would come out
on top.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, he tried to solo it, just like at a
video game.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Solo.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, yeah, you'll see that. His second, the Shaker, gets
increasingly ignored. In the legend, after thirty five minutes of
hand to steam drill competition, John Henry is victorious. He
has drilled two seven foot holes for a total of
fourteen feet. This new fangle drilled by contrast, only makes
(11:22):
one nine foot hole. And you know, like the subreddit,
everybody clapped, everybody cheers, they say, oh, John, you're the best.
Oh my gosh, oh khalu kalay, joyous day. And then
they realize that John himself has fallen down a blood
vessel burst in his brain. The hero of the rail
(11:42):
company has beaten the machine, but lost his life in
doing so well.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And it's, you know, it's it's a teachable moment on
both sides because on the one hand, yeah, did he
do a better job, Yes, but could he do it
that way forever like the machine?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
No? Right, yeah, yeah, exactly, that's our parable And that's
just one version of the story. Obviously, depending on where
you hear it. Sometimes the hammers have a different weight.
I think in the ballad he is attributed a nine
pound hammer, but other times it's fourteen, or twelve or
(12:21):
even twenty. The issue is that the story changes over time.
Other iterations come later, and they will claim John Henry
is not helping blow up these tunnels. Instead, he's one
of the guys who goes it, goes along the railway
lines and drives spikes.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That's why I'm a little confused.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I think that's sort of the version of the story
that I always heard, and I'm picturing John Henry, you know,
and driving those spikes along the railroad.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
But there are multiple versions.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
In this particular version, his mechanical opponent is an automated
rail fastening machine. But at the end of the day,
the results and the you know, moral of the story,
I guess is the same. So whatever you want to
call it a legend, a myth, a bit of folklore,
it's it's persevered and continued to take on new meaning
(13:16):
in the face of you know, further automation, like picture,
you know, the story of the Luddites, you know, throwing
printing presses off of cliffs and things like that. I mean,
we do have historical examples of human beings fighting back
against their mechanized replacements.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. Humanity, as you're saying, has
always had a very complicated relationship with innovation, technology, automation,
and John Henry speaks to that or the story at least.
He's been the subject of novels. The United States Postal
Service put out a postage stamp in his order. He's
(13:54):
been in animated films like the Disney Wolde you mentioned
at the top, and some of the uh, some the
adaptations of the ballad we played to start this episode.
Above all, we have to remember that John Henry Has
a Song is the single most well known and most
often recorded folk song of all of Americana. And that nuts.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And it makes sense because it does kind of have
this dual meaning and that it, you know, tells the
tale of American perseverance and building the railroads and all
of that, But then it also tells the tale of
the cruelty of capitalism, you know, the kinds of things
American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose guitar famously bore the
words this machine kills fascists. Yeah, I would have sung,
(14:43):
So it really does. It has that nostalgia quality, but
it also has that painful twist of, you know, the
lie of the American dream in many ways, or at
least the stilted truth of it.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah. Yeah, it always reminds me of a later band
rage against the machine, which encapsulates a lot of a
lot of the same lessons, the morals, the parables. So
we can all easily understand, especially in these troubled times,
why so many people identify with the heroic character of
(15:17):
John Henry here. But today's question is how much of
that story is true? And Noel max fell ridiculous historians,
as we found, when you search for the truth about
John Henry, things can quickly go off the rails.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Not apologizing they sure can, obviously, the stuff of folklore
typically evolves from a kernel of truth, from a real person,
from a real event, but then has a way of
kind of through that historical game of telephone, taking on
(15:59):
a life of itself, and as you said, Ben, even
creating multiple versions depending on the teller and the circumstances,
and can also evolve kind of with the times.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Absolutely well said, we know it is true. We know
several things are true. It is true that railroad companies exist,
so you know, it was a railroad company that existed
at the time. It is true that they hired thousands
of dudes to smooth out the trade and to cut
through obstacles, including mountains and other protuberances that stood in
(16:32):
the way of their railroad tracks. It's also true that
steel drivers were a real thing and they did work
the way described in the legend. But when we get
to like to your point, Noel, when we get to
the actual John Henry, there's so much debate still in
the modern day. And it's crazy because we always mentioned
(16:54):
the game of telephone, right, The sheer popularity of this
folk tale makes the research difficult. And I got to
tell you guys, also, the fact that his name is
like John Henry instead of John wickenstatt Borough or something
makes it tougher because there are a lot of people
named John Henry or yeah, exactly right. So even if
(17:18):
he was a real single entity, even if we accept
that for the sake of conversation, folks still don't agree
on where or how everything went down. And this this
historical investigation dates way back, like in the nineteen twenties.
(17:40):
You can find people investigating this so.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Back in the nineteen twenties, a guy by the name
of Guy Benton Johnson, a sociologist. He did some digging
into the provenance of the John Henry myth legend folklore
and concluded that there was a John Henry that might
have worked for the railroads, specifically for the Chesapeake and
(18:04):
Ohio Railroad Company during that massive Big Bend Tunnel construction project.
The way he puts it is, one can make out
a case either four or against it.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Okay, okay, let's do the case four. Perhaps start yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
But also he's kind of shrugging, right, he said, you
can say whatever you want. You could say John Henry
is definitely real, or you can say John Henry definitely
didn't do this. It's weird do He does do a
lot of like boots on the ground looking at this.
(18:42):
He says, all right, we know the tunnel really was built,
and it took from eighteen seventy to eighteen seventy two
to make it. And he says, I'm going to go
I'm going to interview people in the area and see
if anybody has a first hand recollection or written proof
of what happens. And he finds a guy who swears
(19:05):
up and down that he knew the John Henry personal
or you could say another guy, another guy named John Henry.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And you know, to your point, Ben, it being something
of a common name, especially for the times, is it
does become harder and harder to you know, run down
the reality of the situation.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
And here's how Johnson puts it.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
So, this man known as Neil Miller told me in
plain words, how he had come to the tunnel with
his father at seventeen, how he carried water and drills
for the steel drivers. He was sort of a steel
drive and caddy of sorts. That's me, not Johnson. How
he saw John Henry every single day, and finally, all
about the contest between John Henry and the stem drill.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
This seems promising, Ben.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Right, Yeah, it seems it has specificity, right, and it
seems like the guy is sharing genuine memories. We know
our buddy. Neil Miller continues, and when he is talking
to this sociologist Johnson, he describes the legend of John
Henry pretty much beat for beat, and the only big
(20:11):
difference is that he says John Henry doesn't die immediately.
He carries on a little bit after the fact, and
then Miller also says, yeah, there was definitely a steam drill.
Let me describe what the steam drill looked like. So
he's talking to the sociologist who was essentially a folklorist
(20:31):
at this point, and our buddy Johnson is listening to him,
and he's writing down notes and dimensions, and so from
these he makes a sketch of what that steam drill
would have looked like. And he goes back and he
looks at photos of early steam drills that would have
been around at the time, and he says, Okay, this
(20:52):
looks legit. So as you said, Noel, it's promising until
there's another turn.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
A bit of a twist not in the favor of
this tale. Sadly, Johnson contacted Sino Railroads themselves themselves, and
their chief engineer C. W. Johns stated with zero uncertainty
that no steam drills were used in the construction of
Big Bend. Unfortunately, John's wasn't able to provide a whole
(21:21):
lot more information. All the records from that period, he said,
burned up in a fire.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Convenient.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I was about to.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Say, but I would think that technology wise, if you
were like the historian for a company like that, you'd
probably have a decent sense of the kind of equipment
that was in play.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great point there, Noel, We know
that from Johnson's research in the late nineteen twenties. In
his estimation, we do have a John Henry, and this
John Henry is in West Virginia. But there are clearly
contradicting accounts of what went down, whether a steam drill
(21:59):
was in the middle, and there is no documentation to
prove it either way. They're just oral recollections. But there
are other opinions. We got a fast forward to two
thousand and six. This is some banger research by an
astorian named Scott Reynolds Nelson.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
In his book Steel Driving Man John Henry, The Untold
Story of an American Legend, Reynolds Nelson argues that Henry
was in fact a real guy born in New Jersey
in eighteen forty eight. He found this information using a
different source than had previously been tapped, unanalyzed prison records
(22:38):
from the Virginia Penitentiary, and in that he found a
nineteen year old African American man with three different names
on paper, John Henry, John W. Henry, and John William Henry.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Now are these all the same guy or these three
different jobs? You know what I mean? This is a pickle.
At the time, we know that penitentiary inmates were often
hired out as laborers to various private companies. John Henry is,
according to Nelson's research, noted as having been part of
(23:15):
the first group of prisoners assigned railroad tunnel work. And
Nelson also looked at CNO's tunneling records, which is surprising
because he found stuff that apparently hadn't burned up in
a fire.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Ah okay, curious, sir, exactly. Ben.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So, with all of this newfound information, Nelson speculated that
his John Henry might well have come to Virginia in
order to help clean up battlefields after the Civil War,
then been arrested for burglary. And we should talk a
little bit about the black Codes. That could be an
episode unto itself in the brutally hypocritical way that these
(23:57):
freedmen were treated after already having gone through such horrific circumstances.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
That's a maybe a conversation for another day.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Then at that point he became potentially one of the
many convicts that were pushed into least labor for the
C and Oil Company, which I would argue, Ben, and
I think this is where you're heading as well.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Is so sort of almost a form of like indentured servitude, right.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
One hundred percent, Yeah, this is definitely I agree. We've
got to make an episode about the Black Codes in
the future. Their primary aim was to put as many
newly freed African American people into the prison system as possible,
(24:40):
so all of the stuff you could be convicted of
carried cartoonishly overbearing fines and a lot of jail time.
And one of the silliest, most evil things about the
Black Codes were that in this area, at this time,
they've made it a crime for black people to seem
(25:04):
too cheerful about the end of slavery right now.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's just absurd and not to mention I think, which
is appropriate in this conversation or relevant, they created these
forced year long labor contracts, and getting out of them,
or trying to get out of them earlier, meant that
you could not only have your wages garnished, but you
could potentially face arrest as well. Aggressively heavy handed implementation
(25:32):
of vagrancy laws like and then this is inherently racist
in and of itself, the idea of the idle black man
finding them for you know, being quote unquote shiftless and
layabouts whatever, right.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Illegal, not to have an employer, illegal to be happy,
all kinds of And.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
This wasn't the same as Jim Crow.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
But hand in hands, right, these things operated in concert.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, exactly, yes, you nailed it right, Like a duck
verse is a goose. We're still talking birds.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
So you actually, isn't it true that this is what
kind of more evolved into Jim Crow. I mean, they
are kind of part of the same thinking.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yes, very much so, very much so the shadow of racism.
And according to Nelson, there is a a kind of
off to the side hero, or at least a well
intentioned person in this story. It's weirdly enough, the warden
of the prison in Virginia. This warden had been in
(26:39):
prison during the Civil War. He was a former ice salesman.
He just sold frozen water and he got in trouble
with Confederate forces for supporting the Union. And when he
became a warden, he looked around at the just horrific
conditions of this Virginia penitentiary. And he said, look, a
(27:00):
lot of these guys have been jammed up on very
small time charges, like you said, being happy loitery, right,
maybe taking a little bit of money. He says, if
we make them laborers for private contractors, maybe they will
have better living conditions, Maybe they will have better clothing,
(27:20):
maybe they will be fed on a more regular, more
healthy basis. GEK. Yeah, that part is largely lost to
history outside of Nelson's research. But like that nineteen twenties
sociologist before him, Nelson looked and looked and looked and
could find no hard evidence of a steam drill actually
(27:41):
being used in Big Bend. That takes him to another tunnel.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Aha, another tunnel.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
He did find evidence that such a contest took place
forty miles away at the Lewis Tunnel between Talcott and
Millburg in Virginia. So we do know that there were
steam drills that were implemented in that project, and we
also know that there were prisoners who worked alongside them.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, and we got to bust a little bit of
a myth about the steam drill from the John Henry story.
The steam drill in folklore is advertised as this unstoppable
amazing kind of evil, unrelenting thing. But the steam drills
that were in practice here, they were not perfect. They
(28:30):
threw up all kinds of dust, and they threw up
all kinds of particulates that would not just endanger the
people in the area, there were also the kind of
things that were small enough to screw up the machine itself.
So we keep running, and the more it ran, the
more likely it would be to get jammed up, and
(28:53):
so you'd have to have a team of humans to
come in either to fix it to clean it.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Right then, I think in somewhere here in terms of
the modern equivalent, you know this this willy nilly deployment
of machine learning, large language models to the point where
they're trying to use it to replace certain jobs.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But then they still require people.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
To kind of check behind them and make sure they
don't blow up the world, you know, or hallucinate facts
when used for you know, writing articles and things like that, right, right, exactly,
almost more trouble than it's worth, because it's just it
isn't ready, right, It's not there yet.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Yes, sir our. Historian Nelson also says the verses of
the ballot about John Henry include him being buried near
quote the White House in the sand somewhere the locomotives roar.
That means that Henry's body, to Nelson's research, was buried
in a ditch, not behind Pennsylvania Avenue right, not behind
(29:52):
the Potus White House, but behind a part of the
Virginia State Penitentiary he called the White House. At the
time this was painted white, and later research we don't
want to get too dark here, found that there were
numerous on marched graves behind that area.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Which makes sense considering the dangerous conditions of this kind
of work and the low value of human labor that
was assigned by these railroad overlords. And Ben, I mean,
I think we've both been thinking this along the way,
and you probably have two ridiculous stories. Is that this,
like a lot of folkloric figures, seems like John Henry was.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
He was a symbol.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
We represented a lot of these these things that we're
talking about, the evils of the corruption and evils of
you know, unchecked industrialization. But he was less likely a
single person than he was like, you know, an amalgamation
of different people and kind of meant to be almost
like a symbol rather than a historical figure.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah. Yeah, that's that's the idea. I think we're all
we're all picking up here, especially because Nilson's research, which
we cannot praise enough, finds that the trail goes cold
for this alternately named John something Williams. The prison records
for John William Henry, they stop full stop in eighteen
(31:20):
seventy three. There's nothing saying he was released for time served.
There's nothing saying he died, but the fact that they
just stopped writing about him at that time. Given the
way of the US Tree of Black People, it probably
means he.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Died not necessarily from a brain aneurysm due to too
much pounding.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
You're right, right, a braid agorism, due to too much bounding.
We're a family show, what a way to go? But
ul a way? You know. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
In the naughtier version of that scenario.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yes, scenario yeah, Nelson instead believes that is Henry, the
one he has found, actually died of a terrible respiratory
condition called silicosis.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Oh oh boy.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Now this is relevant because we're talking about the kind
of thing that is caused by inhalation of gnarly materials
like rock dust and.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Debris one hundred percent, dude. Yeah, brought on by drills,
brought on by blasting, regardless of the of the tunnel
in which you're.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Work And I do have to take this as an
opportunity to say a thing that will always live with
me is the longest word I know. And I believe
this has also been referenced to the Futurama or the
Simpsons at the very least. Numono ultra microscopic silicon volcanic coniosis,
which is not what we're describing here, but it is
the version of it that you would get from working in.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
A coal mine.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Nice? Is that a real word?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Is mnumona ultra microscopic silica bocanoniosis?
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Thank you. It reminds me of a Mary Poppins song.
It's got that cadence to it. That's beautiful. So now, folks,
as we're wrapping up, we have to realize.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
It is the same thing.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
It's it's inhalation of very fine silica or quartz dust.
So I guess, uh, the what was it silicosis? It's
just maybe a shorthand for something very similar, but that
that is the word.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Or that's a specific type perhaps, And at this point,
as we're wrapping up here, folks. Our question naturally moves
from who was the real John Henry?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Too?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Was there a real John Henry? A definitive answer maybe
lost the time because not all the historians agree. But
Nelson's work is awesome. Do check out his book, and
we know most importantly, the legend isn't going away anytime soon.
The story of John Henry has been with our nation
(33:53):
through countless labor movements, power to the people, through the
struggle for civil rights, and now of course returns anew
revivified and the great debate about AI and automation.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Really really great work on this brief as well. Ben.
We're gonna come back soon with another.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Food history story about soft served ice cream for the summer.
But in the meantime, huge thanks to you again, Ben
for the research on this one. Huge thanks to Jonathan's
strickland Is the Quister and A. Jbahamas Jacobs the Pustler.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yes, big, big thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance,
as well as the Rude Dude's a ridiculous crime. If
you love us, you will dig them, hopefully not like
a railway tunnel. We also have to say big, big
thanks to our super producer Max, the Free Trade, Williams,
and Noel this is this is a fun one man.
(34:49):
I'm really enjoying our time together exploring larger than life
figures of American folklore.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
So thank you, ah man, You're welcome, and thanks to you.
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians, choo too. Thank you as
always so much for tuning in. For super producer mister
Max Williams. Chug a chugga.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Higher locomotive guys, Ben, that's you. I'm no, I did
I do dig trains. I don't know what it is.
There's something in the mind of the young boy that
just makes you predisposed to digging machines. But I've mentioned
multiple times, Ben, as i've got a little older, I've
even first they're kind of gone down the rabbit hole
(01:02):
of engineering and you know, clockwork stuff. I mean, I
think you and I are both a little bit into
watches and all of that stuff these days. But yeah,
I get it, man, trains, locomote is all the moving parts,
the engineering of it all.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's no Brown. I've been bullying
where We've got to mention one thing at the top
of Max. I don't want to put you on the
spot too much.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Max.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Not too long ago, Max, Max Williams, you and I
got involved in some pretty cool conversations about model trains
which you were. Pater Familius is a big fan of Oh.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, he's a mild train collector.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
He loves it by the way, that means fare right, yes,
cool google, or like patriarchical gout it. We had a
episode back in twenty twenty four March twenty twenty four
called back to the Choo.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I'm not going to try this one vent. We had
an episode about model trains, back to the Tuture.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
You know who else is really in the Monel trans
two people? Sebastian Bach from skid Row. There is an
episode of Trailer Park Boys where he is featured and
Neil Young. But I also just found out something else
interesting about Sebastian Bach. He briefly was in a Broadway
production of Jesus Christ Superstar and he got fired because
(02:22):
he was horrible.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
He did the skid Row scream.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I thought you were gonna say he just kept going
to his trailer to play with train trailer.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, no, apparently I saw. You can find clips of
it if you want.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I was blissfully unaware of this, and it is fascinating
because he looks like he is in a very different
production than the rest of the cast.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Let's just leave it there.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Another thing that a lot of us are blissfully unaware
of in American society today is this house Yon era
of tall tales, larger than life American heroes from folklore
andrely guys. Remember we did a deep dive into a
(03:05):
heartwarming i'll call him thoroughly eccentric dude called Johnny Appleseed
or John Chapman.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Hmm. And I think we mentioned in that episode the
Disney shorts that featured a lot of these folks, and
there actually was a John Henry one that it came
a good bit later. The Johnny Appleseed one is quite
a bit older. But I believe the Walt Disney Animation
Studio released a short film detailing the myth, the urban legend,
(03:35):
the folkloric tale of John Henry the Steel Driving Man,
back in two thousand.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That is correct, and today we are tackling another story.
This is important to me. I think it's important to
all of us in the West especially. It's a story
that only grows more relevant as Americans and the world
overall grow increasingly concerned about the implications and consequences of
(04:03):
l m's AI and automation. It's the legend of John Henry,
most famous to a lot of grade school kids for
a ballad, and Nola, we're okay with it. I'd love
to share just a snippet of a version of this song.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Oh, surely it's in the public domain at this point.
Let's do it. When John Henry was a little baby boy,
you get hold him in the bomb of your hand.
He gave a long and lost man. What does it
(04:46):
mean to be a steel driving man? Ben? What does
it mean?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Ah? Yes, yes, this is a great question, which that's
one of the questions we can solve in today's episode, Nolan.
But we may not be able to solve all of
the questions about the legend of John Henry. As we'll see,
there's a mystery afoot, or, if you prefer, fellow ridiculous historians,
a mystery on the rails. What say we start with
(05:12):
the legend.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I certainly heard this tale when I was a youth
in primary school, though it may be something that has been,
you know, moved away from a little bit in modern times.
Not one hundred percent sure, I couldn't say, but it
seems like that's entirely likely, because I don't think that
a lot of the younger generation know much about John Henry,
the steel driving man. So according to the tale, he
(05:41):
was born a slave in eighteen forty.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
It was freed after the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
John then found work as a steel driver for the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. So I believe been a
steel driver is someone that hammers the kind of I
guess you could call them supports field sort of railroad
ties right into solid rock.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Well, they're not the same as the ties.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
These are more for like building out the tunnels that
the trains would go into. So these would be like
having to hammer steal into the solid rock to help
build the supports for the railroads, you know, for hollowing
out these tunnels and mountains.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, you hollow out the tunnels by hammering into the rock,
creating a cavity wherein explosives of some sort are inserted,
which blows up more space right into whatever you're trying
to delve through. And then you move forward a little
bit at a time in these harsh weather conditions, and
(06:41):
then you blow it up again, and then you do
it again and again, add nauseum, until you get through
the mountain. And our buddy John Henry is widely renowned,
according to the legend, as the strongest, most efficient, best,
gosh darned steel driver in all the area. We do
have to mention that in real life steel driving at
(07:05):
this time in the eighteen hundreds, you're working in two
man teams. Like how a sniper as a spotter. If
you're a steel driver, you've got the hammer, but you've
got a second guy called the shaker, and they are
I feel like they don't get enough praise because they
have to crouch pretty close to the hole with a
little chisel and turn the drill after each time the
(07:29):
hammer blows. So it's like if you have ever folks,
if you've ever used hammers and carpentry or something like that,
you know you have to have one hand holding the
nail or a hair comb if you want to do
a smart trick, right, and then you got the other
your thumb if you're not careful, right, right. So think
of each member of the team as one of the hands. Right,
(07:51):
John Henry is the hand, but the hammer, the shaker
is the hand kind of holding the nail for our purposes. Uh,
it's it's huge work. The railroad that you mentioned there,
the cno is moving a log chew chewing along, but
they have a big problem ahead. According to the legend,
(08:12):
they have a mountain in West Virginia called the Big
Bend Mountain, and it's too large for them to go around,
so the only way out is through. They have to
blast blast the tunnel into something like one in a
fourth miles of solid rock one.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
As you can imagine, this was dangerous work. This one
in particular, led it to a significant number of fatalities.
Nearly a thousand men died over the three years it
took to complete the project. John Henry, however, was resilient
af and survived all the while swinging a fourteen pound hammer.
(08:53):
He apparently could accomplish around ten to twelve feet of
pounding each day on his own. And and Ben I
was something was kind of ringing a bell, and I
was like, why am I thinking of Shaquille O'Neal uh here?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And it is because he played the character Steele in.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
The movie version of the Marvel character Steele, whose name
as a civilian was John Henry. Steele not meant to
be John Henry himself, but inspired by I mean, he
was meant to be, like I believe, like a really
talented weapons smith and designer.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh that's crazy. I always thought that man. I always
thought Steele was a reference to d C comics.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
It is DC. Okay, yeah, same character, but yeah, DC.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
And And it's clearly like that's a great point because
it shows us how how brasilient this myth is even
in the modern day. So, according to the legend, on
to stage, as they're hammering through this fountain, strolls an
unidentified salesman and he's just like the guy I selling
(10:00):
monoails to Springfield from that legendary Simpsons episode. He's a
slick cat, his hair's pushed back, and he says, I've
got a solution. I've got an automated steam powered drill
that can outperform any living man.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yikes.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Not good news for the steel driving men of the world.
This is quite controversial. So there is a.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Contest of sorts is organized.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
John Henry being the top steel driver in the human race,
it would seem, at least in the region, was to
be pitted against this device. This this drill man versus machine.
The foreman would run the drill and John Henry, dual
wielding two twenty pound hammers, would try to compete with
(10:51):
it on his own and seeing who would come out
on top.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, he tried to solo it, just like at a
video game.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Solo.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, yeah, you'll see that. His second, the Shaker, gets
increasingly ignored. In the legend, after thirty five minutes of
hand to steam drill competition, John Henry is victorious. He
has drilled two seven foot holes for a total of
fourteen feet. This new fangle drilled by contrast, only makes
(11:22):
one nine foot hole. And you know, like the subreddit,
everybody clapped, everybody cheers, they say, oh, John, you're the best.
Oh my gosh, oh khalu kalay, joyous day. And then
they realize that John himself has fallen down a blood
vessel burst in his brain. The hero of the rail
(11:42):
company has beaten the machine, but lost his life in
doing so well.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And it's, you know, it's it's a teachable moment on
both sides because on the one hand, yeah, did he
do a better job, Yes, but could he do it
that way forever like the machine?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
No? Right, yeah, yeah, exactly, that's our parable And that's
just one version of the story. Obviously, depending on where
you hear it. Sometimes the hammers have a different weight.
I think in the ballad he is attributed a nine
pound hammer, but other times it's fourteen, or twelve or
(12:21):
even twenty. The issue is that the story changes over time.
Other iterations come later, and they will claim John Henry
is not helping blow up these tunnels. Instead, he's one
of the guys who goes it, goes along the railway
lines and drives spikes.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That's why I'm a little confused.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I think that's sort of the version of the story
that I always heard, and I'm picturing John Henry, you know,
and driving those spikes along the railroad.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
But there are multiple versions.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
In this particular version, his mechanical opponent is an automated
rail fastening machine. But at the end of the day,
the results and the you know, moral of the story,
I guess is the same. So whatever you want to
call it a legend, a myth, a bit of folklore,
it's it's persevered and continued to take on new meaning
(13:16):
in the face of you know, further automation, like picture,
you know, the story of the Luddites, you know, throwing
printing presses off of cliffs and things like that. I mean,
we do have historical examples of human beings fighting back
against their mechanized replacements.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. Humanity, as you're saying, has
always had a very complicated relationship with innovation, technology, automation,
and John Henry speaks to that or the story at least.
He's been the subject of novels. The United States Postal
Service put out a postage stamp in his order. He's
(13:54):
been in animated films like the Disney Wolde you mentioned
at the top, and some of the uh, some the
adaptations of the ballad we played to start this episode.
Above all, we have to remember that John Henry Has
a Song is the single most well known and most
often recorded folk song of all of Americana. And that nuts.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And it makes sense because it does kind of have
this dual meaning and that it, you know, tells the
tale of American perseverance and building the railroads and all
of that, But then it also tells the tale of
the cruelty of capitalism, you know, the kinds of things
American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose guitar famously bore the
words this machine kills fascists. Yeah, I would have sung,
(14:43):
So it really does. It has that nostalgia quality, but
it also has that painful twist of, you know, the
lie of the American dream in many ways, or at
least the stilted truth of it.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah. Yeah, it always reminds me of a later band
rage against the machine, which encapsulates a lot of a
lot of the same lessons, the morals, the parables. So
we can all easily understand, especially in these troubled times,
why so many people identify with the heroic character of
(15:17):
John Henry here. But today's question is how much of
that story is true? And Noel max fell ridiculous historians,
as we found, when you search for the truth about
John Henry, things can quickly go off the rails.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Not apologizing they sure can, obviously, the stuff of folklore
typically evolves from a kernel of truth, from a real person,
from a real event, but then has a way of
kind of through that historical game of telephone, taking on
(15:59):
a life of itself, and as you said, Ben, even
creating multiple versions depending on the teller and the circumstances,
and can also evolve kind of with the times.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Absolutely well said, we know it is true. We know
several things are true. It is true that railroad companies exist,
so you know, it was a railroad company that existed
at the time. It is true that they hired thousands
of dudes to smooth out the trade and to cut
through obstacles, including mountains and other protuberances that stood in
(16:32):
the way of their railroad tracks. It's also true that
steel drivers were a real thing and they did work
the way described in the legend. But when we get
to like to your point, Noel, when we get to
the actual John Henry, there's so much debate still in
the modern day. And it's crazy because we always mentioned
(16:54):
the game of telephone, right, The sheer popularity of this
folk tale makes the research difficult. And I got to
tell you guys, also, the fact that his name is
like John Henry instead of John wickenstatt Borough or something
makes it tougher because there are a lot of people
named John Henry or yeah, exactly right. So even if
(17:18):
he was a real single entity, even if we accept
that for the sake of conversation, folks still don't agree
on where or how everything went down. And this this
historical investigation dates way back, like in the nineteen twenties.
(17:40):
You can find people investigating this so.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Back in the nineteen twenties, a guy by the name
of Guy Benton Johnson, a sociologist. He did some digging
into the provenance of the John Henry myth legend folklore
and concluded that there was a John Henry that might
have worked for the railroads, specifically for the Chesapeake and
(18:04):
Ohio Railroad Company during that massive Big Bend Tunnel construction project.
The way he puts it is, one can make out
a case either four or against it.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Okay, okay, let's do the case four. Perhaps start yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
But also he's kind of shrugging, right, he said, you
can say whatever you want. You could say John Henry
is definitely real, or you can say John Henry definitely
didn't do this. It's weird do He does do a
lot of like boots on the ground looking at this.
(18:42):
He says, all right, we know the tunnel really was built,
and it took from eighteen seventy to eighteen seventy two
to make it. And he says, I'm going to go
I'm going to interview people in the area and see
if anybody has a first hand recollection or written proof
of what happens. And he finds a guy who swears
(19:05):
up and down that he knew the John Henry personal
or you could say another guy, another guy named John Henry.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And you know, to your point, Ben, it being something
of a common name, especially for the times, is it
does become harder and harder to you know, run down
the reality of the situation.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
And here's how Johnson puts it.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
So, this man known as Neil Miller told me in
plain words, how he had come to the tunnel with
his father at seventeen, how he carried water and drills
for the steel drivers. He was sort of a steel
drive and caddy of sorts. That's me, not Johnson. How
he saw John Henry every single day, and finally, all
about the contest between John Henry and the stem drill.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
This seems promising, Ben.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Right, Yeah, it seems it has specificity, right, and it
seems like the guy is sharing genuine memories. We know
our buddy. Neil Miller continues, and when he is talking
to this sociologist Johnson, he describes the legend of John
Henry pretty much beat for beat, and the only big
(20:11):
difference is that he says John Henry doesn't die immediately.
He carries on a little bit after the fact, and
then Miller also says, yeah, there was definitely a steam drill.
Let me describe what the steam drill looked like. So
he's talking to the sociologist who was essentially a folklorist
(20:31):
at this point, and our buddy Johnson is listening to him,
and he's writing down notes and dimensions, and so from
these he makes a sketch of what that steam drill
would have looked like. And he goes back and he
looks at photos of early steam drills that would have
been around at the time, and he says, Okay, this
(20:52):
looks legit. So as you said, Noel, it's promising until
there's another turn.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
A bit of a twist not in the favor of
this tale. Sadly, Johnson contacted Sino Railroads themselves themselves, and
their chief engineer C. W. Johns stated with zero uncertainty
that no steam drills were used in the construction of
Big Bend. Unfortunately, John's wasn't able to provide a whole
(21:21):
lot more information. All the records from that period, he said,
burned up in a fire.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Convenient.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I was about to.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Say, but I would think that technology wise, if you
were like the historian for a company like that, you'd
probably have a decent sense of the kind of equipment
that was in play.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great point there, Noel, We know
that from Johnson's research in the late nineteen twenties. In
his estimation, we do have a John Henry, and this
John Henry is in West Virginia. But there are clearly
contradicting accounts of what went down, whether a steam drill
(21:59):
was in the middle, and there is no documentation to
prove it either way. They're just oral recollections. But there
are other opinions. We got a fast forward to two
thousand and six. This is some banger research by an
astorian named Scott Reynolds Nelson.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
In his book Steel Driving Man John Henry, The Untold
Story of an American Legend, Reynolds Nelson argues that Henry
was in fact a real guy born in New Jersey
in eighteen forty eight. He found this information using a
different source than had previously been tapped, unanalyzed prison records
(22:38):
from the Virginia Penitentiary, and in that he found a
nineteen year old African American man with three different names
on paper, John Henry, John W. Henry, and John William Henry.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Now are these all the same guy or these three
different jobs? You know what I mean? This is a pickle.
At the time, we know that penitentiary inmates were often
hired out as laborers to various private companies. John Henry is,
according to Nelson's research, noted as having been part of
(23:15):
the first group of prisoners assigned railroad tunnel work. And
Nelson also looked at CNO's tunneling records, which is surprising
because he found stuff that apparently hadn't burned up in
a fire.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Ah okay, curious, sir, exactly. Ben.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So, with all of this newfound information, Nelson speculated that
his John Henry might well have come to Virginia in
order to help clean up battlefields after the Civil War,
then been arrested for burglary. And we should talk a
little bit about the black Codes. That could be an
episode unto itself in the brutally hypocritical way that these
(23:57):
freedmen were treated after already having gone through such horrific circumstances.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
That's a maybe a conversation for another day.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Then at that point he became potentially one of the
many convicts that were pushed into least labor for the
C and Oil Company, which I would argue, Ben, and
I think this is where you're heading as well.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Is so sort of almost a form of like indentured servitude, right.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
One hundred percent, Yeah, this is definitely I agree. We've
got to make an episode about the Black Codes in
the future. Their primary aim was to put as many
newly freed African American people into the prison system as possible,
(24:40):
so all of the stuff you could be convicted of
carried cartoonishly overbearing fines and a lot of jail time.
And one of the silliest, most evil things about the
Black Codes were that in this area, at this time,
they've made it a crime for black people to seem
(25:04):
too cheerful about the end of slavery right now.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's just absurd and not to mention I think, which
is appropriate in this conversation or relevant, they created these
forced year long labor contracts, and getting out of them,
or trying to get out of them earlier, meant that
you could not only have your wages garnished, but you
could potentially face arrest as well. Aggressively heavy handed implementation
(25:32):
of vagrancy laws like and then this is inherently racist
in and of itself, the idea of the idle black man
finding them for you know, being quote unquote shiftless and
layabouts whatever, right.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Illegal, not to have an employer, illegal to be happy,
all kinds of And.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
This wasn't the same as Jim Crow.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
But hand in hands, right, these things operated in concert.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, exactly, yes, you nailed it right, Like a duck
verse is a goose. We're still talking birds.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
So you actually, isn't it true that this is what
kind of more evolved into Jim Crow. I mean, they
are kind of part of the same thinking.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yes, very much so, very much so the shadow of racism.
And according to Nelson, there is a a kind of
off to the side hero, or at least a well
intentioned person in this story. It's weirdly enough, the warden
of the prison in Virginia. This warden had been in
(26:39):
prison during the Civil War. He was a former ice salesman.
He just sold frozen water and he got in trouble
with Confederate forces for supporting the Union. And when he
became a warden, he looked around at the just horrific
conditions of this Virginia penitentiary. And he said, look, a
(27:00):
lot of these guys have been jammed up on very
small time charges, like you said, being happy loitery, right,
maybe taking a little bit of money. He says, if
we make them laborers for private contractors, maybe they will
have better living conditions, Maybe they will have better clothing,
(27:20):
maybe they will be fed on a more regular, more
healthy basis. GEK. Yeah, that part is largely lost to
history outside of Nelson's research. But like that nineteen twenties
sociologist before him, Nelson looked and looked and looked and
could find no hard evidence of a steam drill actually
(27:41):
being used in Big Bend. That takes him to another tunnel.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Aha, another tunnel.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
He did find evidence that such a contest took place
forty miles away at the Lewis Tunnel between Talcott and
Millburg in Virginia. So we do know that there were
steam drills that were implemented in that project, and we
also know that there were prisoners who worked alongside them.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, and we got to bust a little bit of
a myth about the steam drill from the John Henry story.
The steam drill in folklore is advertised as this unstoppable
amazing kind of evil, unrelenting thing. But the steam drills
that were in practice here, they were not perfect. They
(28:30):
threw up all kinds of dust, and they threw up
all kinds of particulates that would not just endanger the
people in the area, there were also the kind of
things that were small enough to screw up the machine itself.
So we keep running, and the more it ran, the
more likely it would be to get jammed up, and
(28:53):
so you'd have to have a team of humans to
come in either to fix it to clean it.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Right then, I think in somewhere here in terms of
the modern equivalent, you know this this willy nilly deployment
of machine learning, large language models to the point where
they're trying to use it to replace certain jobs.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
But then they still require people.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
To kind of check behind them and make sure they
don't blow up the world, you know, or hallucinate facts
when used for you know, writing articles and things like that, right, right, exactly,
almost more trouble than it's worth, because it's just it
isn't ready, right, It's not there yet.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Yes, sir our. Historian Nelson also says the verses of
the ballot about John Henry include him being buried near
quote the White House in the sand somewhere the locomotives roar.
That means that Henry's body, to Nelson's research, was buried
in a ditch, not behind Pennsylvania Avenue right, not behind
(29:52):
the Potus White House, but behind a part of the
Virginia State Penitentiary he called the White House. At the
time this was painted white, and later research we don't
want to get too dark here, found that there were
numerous on marched graves behind that area.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Which makes sense considering the dangerous conditions of this kind
of work and the low value of human labor that
was assigned by these railroad overlords. And Ben, I mean,
I think we've both been thinking this along the way,
and you probably have two ridiculous stories. Is that this,
like a lot of folkloric figures, seems like John Henry was.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
He was a symbol.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
We represented a lot of these these things that we're
talking about, the evils of the corruption and evils of
you know, unchecked industrialization. But he was less likely a
single person than he was like, you know, an amalgamation
of different people and kind of meant to be almost
like a symbol rather than a historical figure.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah. Yeah, that's that's the idea. I think we're all
we're all picking up here, especially because Nilson's research, which
we cannot praise enough, finds that the trail goes cold
for this alternately named John something Williams. The prison records
for John William Henry, they stop full stop in eighteen
(31:20):
seventy three. There's nothing saying he was released for time served.
There's nothing saying he died, but the fact that they
just stopped writing about him at that time. Given the
way of the US Tree of Black People, it probably
means he.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Died not necessarily from a brain aneurysm due to too
much pounding.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
You're right, right, a braid agorism, due to too much bounding.
We're a family show, what a way to go? But
ul a way? You know. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
In the naughtier version of that scenario.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yes, scenario yeah, Nelson instead believes that is Henry, the
one he has found, actually died of a terrible respiratory
condition called silicosis.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Oh oh boy.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Now this is relevant because we're talking about the kind
of thing that is caused by inhalation of gnarly materials
like rock dust and.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Debris one hundred percent, dude. Yeah, brought on by drills,
brought on by blasting, regardless of the of the tunnel
in which you're.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Work And I do have to take this as an
opportunity to say a thing that will always live with
me is the longest word I know. And I believe
this has also been referenced to the Futurama or the
Simpsons at the very least. Numono ultra microscopic silicon volcanic coniosis,
which is not what we're describing here, but it is
the version of it that you would get from working in.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
A coal mine.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Nice? Is that a real word?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Is mnumona ultra microscopic silica bocanoniosis?
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Thank you. It reminds me of a Mary Poppins song.
It's got that cadence to it. That's beautiful. So now, folks,
as we're wrapping up, we have to realize.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
It is the same thing.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
It's it's inhalation of very fine silica or quartz dust.
So I guess, uh, the what was it silicosis? It's
just maybe a shorthand for something very similar, but that
that is the word.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Or that's a specific type perhaps, And at this point,
as we're wrapping up here, folks. Our question naturally moves
from who was the real John Henry?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Too?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Was there a real John Henry? A definitive answer maybe
lost the time because not all the historians agree. But
Nelson's work is awesome. Do check out his book, and
we know most importantly, the legend isn't going away anytime soon.
The story of John Henry has been with our nation
(33:53):
through countless labor movements, power to the people, through the
struggle for civil rights, and now of course returns anew
revivified and the great debate about AI and automation.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Really really great work on this brief as well. Ben.
We're gonna come back soon with another.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Food history story about soft served ice cream for the summer.
But in the meantime, huge thanks to you again, Ben
for the research on this one. Huge thanks to Jonathan's
strickland Is the Quister and A. Jbahamas Jacobs the Pustler.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yes, big, big thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance,
as well as the Rude Dude's a ridiculous crime. If
you love us, you will dig them, hopefully not like
a railway tunnel. We also have to say big, big
thanks to our super producer Max, the Free Trade, Williams,
and Noel this is this is a fun one man.
(34:49):
I'm really enjoying our time together exploring larger than life
figures of American folklore.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
So thank you, ah man, You're welcome, and thanks to you.
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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