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