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Paddy Welcome Back As the railroad went west new towns were started, new business sprang up, and it gave the people trying to get out of the East more access to the West. It was easier getting out there on a railroad than it was crossing the Platte in a wagon train, and it gave you a lot better protection against bandits and Indians and so on. A fellow going to work in a railroad camp down at the end of the track didn't have much of a life. Held make his day money and go into the camp town, this little tent city that was built up around the end of the track. The concessioners bought the rights from the railroad to set up a gambling tent or a whore house or a gin mill. That's the kind of place where the strong arm rules. A guy would come in there after a hard day's work with his day money in his pocket, get all tanked up on bad booze, and wind up getting bilked out of his money. The concessioners paid a lot of that money back to the railroads, who turned around and paid it out again as wages. That's a real cheap way to build a railroad. I can't help but feel that the kind of economic system we're in today is fundamentally the same, with a little subtlety and some imagination and a few refinements. There are songs like "Paddy on the Railroad" which are about those times and about that kind of work. Thing is, if you look through the past, if you read old diaries, if you talk to old-timers who remember, very often you find that things happened for which songs were not written. If I could find a traditional song that said those things, I would sing it. |
I wish I was the suttler's mule Ching-chong Chinaman, he's got a curlicue, Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips |
