John Henry:
Man vs. Machine

Folks say lightning flashed and the whole state of Virginia shook the night John Henry was born to Preacher Henry and his wife. The same folks say he weighed 44 pounds at birth.

Even as a baby, John loved hammering things. By age 10, he could hammer down fence posts like a grown man. At 18, he was more than six feet tall, weighed about 200 pounds, and was strong as a locomotive. When working on the family’s small farm, he would hear a distant train whistle and say, “Someday, I’m gonna be a steel driver for the railroad.”

So he went to West Virginia and signed on with the Chesapeake & Ohio — called the C&O — railroad crew, working on the Big Bend Tunnel. One and a quarter miles long, it would cut through a mountain and become the longest railroad tunnel in America.

John Henry was hired as a “driver,” who hammered a steel drill into the rock to make an opening for blasting powder. His every blow drove the drill an inch deeper into solid rock. The work was hard and the days were hot, but John loved the idea that his hammering was helping make a tunnel through which trains would soon roar. His boss boasted, “He’s my finest driver. I’d match him against any man.”

Though tough, John had a tender heart and fell in love with Lucy, who worked as a maid. She was short to his tall, coffee and cream to his ebony — but while she seemed soft, she was a steel-driving woman from a family of railroad workers. She could lay down rails second only to John Henry, if she had a mind to. They were soon married, and lived in one of the little wooden shanties that housed the railroad workers. The whole crew turned out for the wedding. They bought John a new 20-pound hammer and gave Lucy a flapjack turner big enough to flip hotcakes the size of wagon wheels.

Word reached the tunneling crew that the owners of the C&O railroad were thinking of buying a newly invented steam drill to replace many workers.

John Henry and the other men laughed and called it “the iron monster.”

But the drill’s inventor insisted, “My machine will drill a hole faster than any 10 men!” Then John began to worry that he might lose his job and his and Lucy’s dream of buying a farm. And it bothered him to think that folks would say the tunnel was dug by a machine, not a good, honest man’s work.

So John went to his boss and said, “You tell everyone, ‘I’ve got a man who can swing two 20-pound hammers. He’ll beat that steam drill down and prove that a man is better than any iron monster.’ But you gotta promise, if I win, you’ll keep all the men working until the Big Bend Tunnel is finished.”

The boss agreed to a 30-minute contest. If the machine outdrilled John Henry, the C&O would buy it and fire the workers. But if John Henry won, they would pay him $100, and he and the other men could keep their jobs.

Lucy was worried, and tried to get him to give up his plan. But John kissed her and said, “The men are countin’ on me. And with that money, we can buy our farm. Besides, a man ain’t nothin’ but a man. I gotta prove that no machine can drill better than a sledgehammer and steel in an honest man’s hand.”

The next day, the man-giant and the steam drill lined up side by side, near the end of the tunnel, while a big crowd gathered inside.

The boss dropped his flag and the contest began.

At first the steam-powered drill pulled ahead.

But this only made John Henry slam his hammer down faster. By the time the contest was halfway over, John Henry’s spikes were biting just as deep as the machine’s, while the men cheered.

Soon John’s 20-pounders rose and fell so fast they were almost invisible. The sweat poured down his face, and he grunted as he strained to lift his hammers. Still John slammed away. And he smiled when he saw the steam drill begin to overheat and shake.

John pulled farther ahead. His muscles were aching and the rock seemed to grow harder, but this only made him pound more forcefully. Just before the boss yelled, “Time!,” the mechanical spike driver shook and wheezed and ground to a halt.

But John Henry could not slow down at first. He drove his spike several inches deeper, then suddenly fell to the ground. The men carried him out of the tunnel and laid him with his head in Lucy’s lap.

“Lucy,” he gasped. “Did I beat that steam drill?”

“You did,” she said, her tears falling like cool rain on his burning face.

“Oh, Lucy, I hear a roarin’ in my head, like a locomotive rushin’ down the tracks,” John said. Then his soul boarded the train that only he could see.

While John Henry died that hot July day, his story became a part of railroad legend. Wherever a train speeds over the tracks, some part of John Henry rides the rails with it.