The Story
When the great railroads were being built across America, the hardest work of all was driving steel spikes into rock to blast tunnels through the mountains. Men with massive hammers would swing all day in the dark and the dust, and the best of them all was a man named John Henry.
John Henry was born with a hammer in his hand — or so the old song says. He was the biggest, strongest, and most determined steel-driver who ever lived. He could drive a spike faster than two men combined, and he never tired, and he never complained, and every stroke of his hammer rang out true.
The railroad was cutting through Big Bend Mountain in West Virginia, and the work was slow and hard. Then one day, a salesman came to the camp with a new machine: a steam-powered drill.
"This machine," said the salesman, "can drill faster than twenty men."
John Henry stepped forward. "I'll race your machine," he said. "Man against machine — through the mountain. We'll see which one comes out the other side first."
The foreman agreed. At dawn the next morning, John Henry took a twenty-pound hammer in each hand, and the steam drill fired up beside him.
For hour after hour they drove through the rock. The steam drill screeched and the hammers rang, and the mountain shook. John Henry sang as he worked — songs to keep his heart steady and his arms strong.
By midday, John Henry was ahead.
By late afternoon, he had driven fourteen feet of steel into the mountain. The steam drill had only gone nine feet.
John Henry broke through first. The crowd roared. He raised his hammer to the sky.
He had won.
They say he drove so hard and so deep that his great heart gave out at the moment of victory — but his spirit was too big to disappear. The song of John Henry is still sung, wherever people do honest, hard work and refuse to be beaten.