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Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines. The British equivalents of the term gandy dancer are "navvy" (from "navigator"), originally builders of canals or "inland navigations", for builders of railway lines, and "platelayer" for workers employed to inspect and maintain the track. In the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, Mexican and Mexican-American track workers were colloquially "traqueros". In the U.S., early section crews were often made up of recent immigrants and ethnic minorities who vied for steady work despite poor wages and working conditions, and hard physical labor. The Chinese, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans in the West, the Irish in the Midwest, and East Europeans and Italians in the Northeast all worked as gandy dancers. Though all gandy dancers sang railroad songs, it may be that southern African American gandy dancers, with a long tradition of using song to coordinate work, were unique in their use of task-related work chants. There are various theories about the derivation of the term, but most refer to the "dancing" movements of the workers using a specially manufactured "lining" bar, which came to be called a "gandy", as a lever to keep the tracks in alignment.〔(Etymonline.com )〕 ==Etymology== The term has an uncertain origin. A majority of early northern railway workers were Irish,〔PBS, American Experience, People & Events: Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad, (PBS.org ), retrieved November 23, 2010〕 so an Irish or Gaelic derivation for the English term seems possible. Others have suggested that the term gandy dancer was coined to describe the movements of the workers themselves, i.e., the constant "dancing" motion of the track workers as they lunged against their tools in unison to nudge the rails, often timed by a chant; as they carried rails; or, speculatively, as they waddled like ganders while running on the railroad ties.〔Railway track and structures, Volume 65, Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation, 1969, page 35〕〔William Safire, What's the good word?, Times Books, 1982, page 180〕 But most researchers have identified a "Gandy Shovel Company" or, variously, "Gandy Manufacturing Company" or "Gandy Tool Company" reputed to have existed in Chicago as the source of the tools from which gandy dancers took their name.〔Jackson, Alan A. (2006). The Railway Dictionary, 4th ed., Sutton Publishing, Stroud. ISBN 0-7509-4218-5〕 Some sources even list the goods manufactured by the company, i.e., "tamping bars, claw bars, picks, and shovels."〔Freeman H. Hubbard, Railroad avenue: great stories and legends of American railroading, Whittlesey House, 1945, page 344〕〔Hobo Terminology, (Angelfire.com ), retrieved November 23, 2010〕 But others have cast doubt on the existence of such a company. The Chicago Historical Society has been asked for information on the company so many times that they have said, "It's like a legend, " but they have never been able to find a Gandy company in their old records.〔Maggie Holtzberg, "The Making of the Film, A diary account of the making of Gandy Dancers", (Folkstreams.net ), retrieved November 23, 2010〕〔"the existence of a Gandy Manufacturing Company ... has not been substantiated" Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010 (Dictionary.reference.com ), retrieved November 23, 2010〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「gandy dancer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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