Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, Part I

A summary and analysis of Atlas Shrugged

 

Based upon the novel, Atlas Shrugged, Copyright © 1957 by Ayn Rand

Copyright renwed 1985 by Eugene Winick, Paul Gitlin and Leonard Peikoff

Editorial comments, 1996 by Tom Paper

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a herioic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Ayn Rand

 

Introduction

Atlas Shrugged is like a special set of eyeglasses with which to see the world. It is a perception and a philosophy, and because of that, it will always be open for criticism.

My purpose in writing this summary was to better understand the concepts, philosophy and morality presented, as well as to provide a condensed version of this important book for those who have not read it ever or recently. However, a bonus in writing this book has been the evolution of my own personal philosophy.

This book is summarized by chapter. References are made to page numbers in the 35th Edition Hardcover, which is 1168 pages in length and was published in March of 1992. The original book was published in 1957. The most recently published softcover is about 1070 pages.

The author of Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand. She grew up in the former Soviet Union and came to the United States early in her life, but not so early that she had not had time to comprehend the Soviet way of life. She wrote two small novels (We The Living and Anthem) before writing her first full-scale novel, The Fountainhead, in 1943. The Fountainhead is a book about an architect, his work and his adherence to his nature, his values and his principles. Atlas Shrugged is a book, not only about people and their nature, but also about the relationships that exist between people.

Some comments about this book are in order:

• Wherever Rand’s words are paraphrased, no quotes are used.

• Quotation marks are used wherever direct quotes are included in this text, with two exceptions: The first exception is John Galt’s speech, which begins on page 1009. The speech has been summarized and re-written in the first person, from Galt’s perspective, although certain portions contain a good amount of Rand’s language. The second exception is for names of characters, places, known facts that are repeated concepts.

• Where italics are shown within quotations, these italics are Ayn Rand’s.

• The following brackets, for example, [he], have been used inside of quotations to indicate a word or words which were implied by the Rand but not written in that manner.

• The following brackets, for example, {I believe that…}, have been used where I am expressing my opinions and analysis.

Part I – Non-contradiction

Chapter I – The Theme

“Who is John Galt?”

So begins the book with these words spoken by a bum to Eddie Willers, an executive with Taggart Transcontinental, the largest railroad in the United States. Eddie is the right-hand man of the chief operating manager, Dagny Taggart. Dagny’s brother, Jim Taggart, is President of Taggart Transcontinental. Eddie has known Dagny and Jim since their childhoods. During their summers spent outside of New York City, they were often visited by the aristocratic heir to a South American copper mining fortune, Fransisco d’Anconia.

Eddie is especially annoyed by the bum’s comment about John Galt. “Who is John Galt?” can be roughly translated into “shit happens,” “who cares?,” or “what can you do?”

Eddie walks down the streets of New York towards the headquarters of Taggart Transcontinental, located above the Taggart Terminal. He is upset by the worn-down businesses and shuttered windows of stores gone bankrupt. It reminds him of an oak tree which was hit by lightning when he was young and revealed an empty hull. New York is still mighty, but its hull is growing empty. Eddie recalls this event, thinking it was an “immense betrayal.” Things should be as they really are. Eddie is 32 years old and goes by the creed “whatever is right.”

At the office, Eddie speaks with Jim Taggart about The Rio Norte Line, a branch of Taggart Transcontinental which is falling apart. Jim doesn’t want to be bothered. Jim Taggart is a fearful and scum-ridden individual. He doesn’t like it when people look into his eyes.

Taggart Transcontinental is waiting on rail to re-build part of the Rio Norte Line. The rail was supposed to be supplied by Associated Steel, a company run by a man named Orren Boyle. Boyle has overrun several deadlines for delivering the steel. Jim tells Eddie that Boyle, who is Jim’s good friend, has good excuses for all his delays. Jim doesn’t want to hear Eddie talk about the possibility of getting the rail from Rearden Steel, a maverick steel company run by Hank Rearden. Eddie tells Jim that they must repair the Rio Norte Line because a competing line, the Phoenix-Durango , is taking business away from the Rio Norte Line. Wyatt Oil, located in the Rocky Mountain region, is served by both the Rio Norte Line and Phoenix-Durango. Ellis Wyatt, the thirty-three year-old owner of Wyatt Oil, recently took his business away from Rio Norte Line and gave it to Phoenix-Durango. Wyatt is a young oil baron who has done well by injecting his life and energy into old, worn-out oil wells. Eddie defends Wyatt, but Jim thinks that it is Wyatt’s greediness which is the source of his problems on the Rio Norte Line. Making money, according to Jim, is not the standard by which someone should be judged for their value to society. Jim thinks that the Phoenix-Durango is “destructive” competition. Walking out of Jim’s office, Eddie feels despair, wondering if his and Taggart Transcontinental’s days are numbered.

P12. Dagny is riding a train and hears a brakeman whistling a tune of “triumph” and “upward motion.” The brakeman says it is Richard Halley’s work, his fifth concerto. Dagny questions him because she believes that Halley only did four concerto’s before his recent disappearance from society. She will verify this fact later, when she gets back to her office.

She falls asleep and is awakened to find that the train has stopped. There’s some problem and the crew is doing nothing to take responsibility for the problem. Dagny tells them what to do. A crewman follows her orders, but he is worried about whether Dagny will take full responsibility if there is a problem with her solution. Dagny resolves to turn this branch over to a promising young employee named Owen Kellogg, who is currently working at the Taggart Terminal in New York.

P18. Dagny meets with her brother, Jim, and tells him that she has ordered the rail needed to fix the Rio Norte Line from Rearden Steel. Jim protests and Dagny dares him to call Rearden Steel and cancel the order. Dagny thinks it is insane that Jim doesn’t want to deal with Rearden Steel because they are so efficient. She tells him that the rails are going to be made from Rearden Metal, a new and strong alloy which has never been used before. Again Jim protests. He doesn’t want to make the change and yet he doesn’t want to take any responsibility. Discussion turns to the San Sebastián Line, another branch of Taggart Transcontinental which is being built into Mexico. The San Sebastián Line has been Jim’s pet project. Dagny fears that the Line is going to be nationalized. Moreover, the Line has yet to generate any revenues. Jim thinks that Dagny is giving special favors to Wyatt, instead of helping with the San Sebastián Line, which will help the entire underprivilege nation of Mexico. Dagny says that she’s running a railroad, not an organization dedicated to giving out “chances.” Jim tells her that she has no feelings. Not everyone, he says, can dedicate their entire lives to metals and engines.

Dagny goes back to her office. Owen Kellogg wants a meeting with her. Kellogg arrives and, in a very business-like manner, tells Dagny that he is quitting and that he can not tell her the reason.

Chapter II – The Chain

P27. A train rides the rails into Philadelphia, passing Rearden Steel. Its passengers, whose mindset is that the collective is more important than any individual, are oblivious to the fact that the first heat of Rearden Metal is being poured as they are passing. The metal is being poured only because of the intelligent and conscious execution of every member of Rearden Steel, and especially because of the will and the brain of Hank Rearden. Hank is the owner and founder of Rearden Steel. He is in his late 40’s and is married. As Hank leaves his office, he carries with him a bracelet made of links of Rearden Metal. Rearden Metal has taken over ten years to develop and Hank is bringing the bracelet home to his give to his wife. He thinks back on his past: working in a mine at age 14, learning that pain is not a reason for stopping, accomplishing things because he knew what needed to be done. Hank doesn’t understand why anyone is unhappy.

P32. Hank comes home and is greeted by his wife, Lillian, his mother and his brother, Paul. Hank’s mother and brother live with Lillian and Hank. Also at his home is Paul Larkin, a friend to the others but not to Hank. Hank is late and his wife makes a joke that he didn’t stay at work even later to sweep some slag out of a furnace. His brother tells him that he works too hard and Hank simply replies that he likes his work. Lillian traps Hank into demonstrating that he doesn’t know the date of their anniversary, December 10th. Lillian and the others get a perverse sense of satisfaction at his mistake.

Hank gives Lillian the bracelet made from Rearden Metal. Lillian belittles the gift, but then patronizingly defends Hank when the others claim that Hank is conceited. Hank doesn’t understand their code of behavior. “He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth.” Lillian, his mother, his brother and Paul almost want to be hurt. Hank feels nothing for them.

Larkin tries to warn Hank that his public relations man in Washington is not doing his job well. Hank dislikes the notion that he needs someone in politics to protect his interests. He thinks he should live and die based upon his own merit, not the amount of “pull” he has in Washington.

Philip asks Hank for $10,000 for an organization to which he belongs, Friends of Global Progress. Philip’s request contains both the hint of asking with the insult that capitalists have no social conscience because they give nothing back to society. Hank considers firing back an insult, but instead decides to give Philip the money. Philip’s reaction is blank. Lillian claims that Hank’s gift is just his celebration of his own success at work. Hank’s mother tells Hank that he’s a good man, “but not often enough.” Philip asks Hank if he can have the money in cash because everyone in Friends of Global Progress believes that Hank represents the worst of society. Hank walks away. Lillian contends that Hank takes pleasure in keeping all those around him in bondage as his dependents and that the chain made from Rearden Metal is symbolic of this dependency. {Rand will come back to the analogy of bondage many more times in the book; however, the truth is the opposite of Lillian’s statements. Specifically, those like Lillian, the looters, try to make those like Hank, the producers, feel guity for being so selfish. The looters hope this guilt will hold the producers in bondage so that doers will continue to provide economically for the looters. Another point worth noting is Rand’s view on the types of people in the world: she sees things in black and white. People are either good or evil, productive or non-productive.}

Chapter III – The Top And The Bottom

P44. A meeting taking place in a bar on the top floor of a 60-story building. Despite its towering location, the bar feels like a cellar. The participants of the meeting include James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch and Paul Larkin. {This council today might be called “Businessmen for Social Responsibility.” Rand would call them the “Masters of Pull.”} Wesley Mouch is Rearden’s man in Washington. They are sharing ideas such as: that the free economy must develop social responsibility or it will be done for; that the only justification of private property is public service; that private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society. These ideas, in Rand’s eyes, are ridiculous. The group begins bad-mouthing Rearden Steel for the bad quality of his product and for how many advantages he has. They don’t think that it is fair that he gets all the benefit of his success. They talk about how “dog-eat-dog” competition is destructive to society and undermines the companies like their own that have a “historical priority.” They say no one should be able to blame them for their business failures. They all perk up at the subject of Mexico, where they say they are embarking on a mission of social conscience to help underprivileged people. In reality, they all have invested in The San Sebastián Mines because they have inside information. There are rumors that mines will be nationalized, but Boyle denies this. The San Sebastián Line, a part of Taggart Transcontinental, runs to the mines under the power of an antiquated wood-burning locomotive. Jim says that making things happen all depends upon whom you know. {Rand believes just the opposite, that making things happen depends upon a man’s ability. And a man’s ability is what really determines his worth.} The subject of the San Sebastián Line makes Jim ponderous and he leaves.

P50. Rand describes Dagny’s early years. At nine years old, Dagny decided for herself that she would run Taggart Transcontinental someday. At twelve, she told this to Eddie Willers. At fifteen she realized that women did not run railroads, but she dismissed this fact immediately. At sixteen, she began working as a night operator at a small railroad station. Dagny loved the railroad because of the joy she saw and felt when workers were achieving things because of their skill, ability, ingenuity and intelligence. {Underlining TMP.} Some people called her selfish and conceited, but she paid them no attention. Dagny rose through the ranks of Taggart Transcontinental because of both her ability and the decreasing number of men of ability. Her brother, James, five years older than Dagny, started working for the railroad at the same time she did. He was twenty-one and started in the Public Relations Department. Early on, he was skilled in obtaining favors from the legislature.

Dagny realizes that the enemy she is fighting most often is not a superior ability, but ineptitude. For five years, Dagny has been fighting the San Sebastián Line, trying to slow or stop its completion because it has no paying customers. The one person, however, who has made sure that the San Sebastián Line would be built is Francisco d’Anconia. He inherited his family’s copper fortune, based in Chile, and bought bare mountains in Mexico. The prevailing wisdom is that because of the d’Anconia reputation, those mountains must contain copper. Hypocritically, those who censured Francisco for being a ruthless capitalist (Jim, Boyle, etc.) were also the first to buy stock in these Mexican mines. The mines and the San Sebastián Line are touted by everyone but Francisco for their great service to the poor of Mexico. The board of Taggart Transcontinental wants to continue with the San Sebastián Line for idealistic reasons. Says one board member: “Material greed isn’t everything. There are non-material ideals to consider.” Dagny is ardently against the San Sebastián Line because it has no customers, while paying customers like Wyatt Oil on the Rio Norte Line, are not getting good service because the Line is in bad repair. The Phoenix-Durango is not able to keep up with Wyatt’s needs and Wyatt would use the Rio Norte Line if it was operating up to his standards. The San Sebastián Line represents the results of what happens when “pull” determines the outcome, while the Phoenix-Durango represents the results of merit. The Rio Norte Line represents a golden opportunity for Taggart Transcontinental.

Dagny tried for three years to get the Vice President of Operations position, but was prevented because she was a woman. When the San Sebastián Line received its initial approval, she tendered her resignation. She was summarily given the Vice President of Operations position. As Vice President of Operations, Dagny has made things happen, including the construction of the San Sebastián Line. She now has tried to focus on the monumental task of getting the Rio Norte Line operable, however, Jim insists on focusing on the San Sebastián Line, which has no customers and, obviously, is not making money. Dagny was once a friend of Francisco, whose company is to operate the mines at the end of the Line, but she has since renounced him. Jim thinks that Francisco’s mines will allow Taggart Transcontinental to make money on the San Sebastián Line. Once that happens, he says, the Rio Norte Line will also make money. Jim likes to be able to say that he is a part of a noble cause which is the San Sebastián Line. Dagny thinks the San Sebastián Line will be nationalized, but Jim refuses to give this consideration.

Dagny leaves the Taggart Terminal and passes the statue of Nat Taggart, a great hero and capitalist. “He was a man who had never accepted the creed that others had the right to stop him. He set his goal and moved toward it, his way straight as one of his rails…He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it.” Dagny stops to talk with the cigar stand vendor, who collects cigarettes in his spare time. He laments about about how people today seem to be hurrying because they are afraid. People used to hurry, he says, because they were chasing after something.

Eddie Willers often spends his evenings in the employee cafeteria of Taggart Transcontinental, speaking with a track laborer who listens attentively. Eddie spills all of his troubles to this laborer. Rand writes these scenes as a monologue given by Eddie. Even though the track laborer speaks to Eddie, the laborer’s words are never written out by Rand, and his identity remains a mystery until later in the book.

{The title of the chapter, “The Top And The Bottom,” refers to the bar on the top of the skyscraper, as well as the ground floor of the Taggart Terminal. Rand’s point is that things are reversed. Top should be highest merit. Bottom should be lowest. Nat Taggart is one of the most meritorious persons ever, residing in the bottom of the Taggart Terminal. James Taggart and Orren Boyle are scum, hanging out in a bar on top of a skyscraper.}

Chapter IV – The Immovable Movers

P64. Dagny returns from a trip to visit a locomotive builder who is late in supplying an order. The builder has no excuses, no specifcs to offer and will not take responsibility for not meeting his commitments. She goes to her office late at night and finds Eddie. He tells her that one of their contractors, McNamara, has unexpectedly quit and disappeared, even though he would have made a fortune on the contracts he had with Taggart Transcontinental. Later that night, Dagny is at home, thinking about how much she loves her work. She takes joy, not only in doing work, but also in admiring the greatness of other’s work. She wishes she could find more joy from admiration of other’s work, but she believes that society no longer holds excellence as a virtue. The dominant view is that businessmen are greedy and depraved. {A well-run business delivers excellence to its customers. Excellence is a virtue and it occurs when a business embraces the morality of reason. The morality of reason is a code of right and wrong which is based upon an intellectual understanding of what is good and bad for the long-term interests of the business.}

She listens to music and thinks that there are still some musical pieces of greatness for her to admire such as Halley’s Fourth Concerto, a “song of rebellion – and of a desperate quest.” Richard Halley spent many years
in which he was unappreciated by the public because his music was “heroic.” The critics thought that heroic art was simple and unsophisticated. Halley presented an opera when he was twenty-four and was booed by the crowd. Nineteen years later, at the age of forty-three, he presented the same opera and was cheered. He retired the next day. Halley decided that he could find no joy in his work if he made his view of his work contingent upon the opinions of this society.

P70. Jim and his girlfriend, Betty Pope, are at Jim’s apartment. Jim is angry at the world, as well as Betty. “To them, the act of sex was neither joy nor sin.” Betty thinks it’s awful that Dagny is a female executive, but she also questions Jim about whether he is really in charge. The rumors are that Dagny is the one who runs the show. Jim’s says that he’s going to quash her ability to do things. Jim takes joy in stopping other people regardless of whether those people are doing good or bad things; his love is of the destruction, especially when that destruction is of excellence.
The San Sebastián Line is nationalized and Taggart Transcontinental calls an emergency Board Meeting. Before the nationalization, Jim had denigrated his sister for her lack of attention to the San Sebastián Line. Now he goes to the meeting and tells the board that he is the one who ordered all the good locomotives out of Mexico and the San Sebastián Line. Jim proposes that those who had supported the founding of the San Sebastián Line be fired. T
he board members, however, are not concerned about specific actions to take regarding the situation. Instead, they are more concerned with what words they must say to their constituents about the San Sebastián Line nationalization.
No one can figure out Francisco. Jim and Boyle had thought that he was a genuine prodigy and they can’t understand how he could have allowed himself to lose so much money on the nationalization. Dagny has read many stories in the paper about Francisco’s playboy lifestyle and she can’t understand his motives.

P73. The Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule is passed by The National Alliance of Railroads, an industry association organized to fight anyone who might try to take advantage of the railroads. A supporter of the Alliance says, “Against whom is any union organized?” A skeptic replies, “That’s what I wonder about.” {Rand doesn’t like any kind of union, whether it be labor or industry organizations. She thinks that unions allow ineptitude to be hidden by the power and numbers of the larger group. Rand’s heroes are individuals who succeed because of their individual ability, not because they are part of a group or because they are able to influence others.} The Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule is passed after discussion about the railroads’ role in the social welfare of the nation. Dan Conway, President of the Phoenix-Durango, is one of 5 dissenters to The Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule. This law calls for no “destructive competition” and requires that junior railroads withdraw from markets where there is a more senior railroad already existing. The withdrawal is to occur within 9 months of the law’s passage. Orren Boyle greets Jim outside the meeting and tells him, “I’ve delivered. Your turn now, Jimmie.” {This is standard “looter-speak,” trading favors with each other.}

Jim goes into Dagny’s office to gloat about the passage of The Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule. Jim seems happier that he has hurt her than he is about his victory over his competition. Dagny senses something important in Jim’s behavior, although she can not fully verbalize it. {What she senses is the looter’s code of morality, which derives happiness from the negativity and destruction which they are able to cause in others.}

P77. Dagny goes to the office of Dan Conway. The Phoenix-Durango was doing well before The Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule because it was able to serve the oilfields of Ellis Wyatt. Now, however, Conway is required to cease from serving Wyatt Oil because The Phoenix-Durango is junior railroad to Taggart Transcontinental. Conway is a man of merit who knows and cares only about railroading. He has decided not to fight The Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule. Conway has fought all sorts of business battles and natural battles, but this is a battle he can not fight. Dagny tells him that the looters are surviving only by destroying the men of merit. Survival by destruction, she says, can not be right. “Nothing can make self-immolation proper.” She says that she wanted to beat him in the worst way, as any true competitor wants to beat a rival. However, she doesn’t want to win in a rigged game. Conway tells Dagny that she’d better get the Rio Norte Line organized and on-line quickly, because Ellis Wyatt won’t stand for half-assed service. He tells her that “It’s all on your shoulders now” and that she shouldn’t feel sorry for him because she’s the one who’s going to have to work harder in the future.

P81. Ellis Wyatt walks into Dagny’s office unannounced and gives her an ultimatum: she had better give him exactly the service that he demands or he will be destroyed. “It is now in your power to destroy me; I may have to go; but if I go, I’ll make sure that I take the rest of you along with me.” Dagny calmly replies that Wyatt will get the transportation he needs. Wyatt is suprised by the efficiency of her words. {This is a wonderful passage, where Wyatt, who is used to dealing with incompetence, meets Dagny, who has yearned for so long to deal with men of ability.} She immediately feels a love and reverence for Wyatt and knows that her best response is not her words but the actual delivery of what he wants.

P82. Dagny goes to Rearden’s office to ask him to make the Rearden Metal needed for the Rio Norte Line in nine months, instead of the twelve months she had asked for earlier. Rearden charges her a fortune for the metal, but she knows it is worth the price. There are no favors poisoning Dagny and Hank’s relationship. They simply trade value for value and are in mutual admiration. Each being excellent in their work allows the other to reach higher levels of excellence. For Dagny, Rearden’s metal will allow her to save her railroad. For Rearden, Dagny’s order of Rearden Metal is his first, because no one else has been willing to take the risk, even though all the tests have proven its effectiveness and safety. Each is happy that the other is serving his self-interest, because they know that business success depends upon business self-interest.

Rearden shows Dagny the first batch of Rearden Metal being made. She knows that showing this to her is also his greatest tribute to her. The opportunities for Rearden Metal are many, including faster trains, stronger cars, and less expensive bridges. Rearden comments that they both are “blackguards” (like black sheep) because all they care about is material things and they don’t have any spiritual goals. Dagny is not pleased by this statement, which demonstrates Rearden’s fundamental guilt.

{While Rearden’s flaw is his willingness to accept guilt, both Hank and Dagny hold excellence as their highest value. Rand would say that excellence is the highest and most noble goal an individual can have. Their objectives are not the wealth which comes from their organization. Instead, their objectives are to run their organizations in the most excellent manner they can. If money was their only goal, then Dagny would have been happy with The Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule, because it put Dan Conway out of business. The reality is that Dan being out of business means one less competitor which means Dagny will be receiving less pushing from a competitor towards her own excellence.}

Chapter V – The Climax Of The d’Anconias

P89. Eddie shows Dagny an article outlining how the San Sebastián mines were completely worthless right from the start. Dagny knows that something strange is going on because Francisco is nothing if not a smart man. She tells Eddie to call the Wayne-Faulkland Hotel and tell Francisco that she is on her way to see him.
P90. Dagny reminisces about her childhood with Francisco who spent one month every summer with the Taggarts. To Francisco, the Taggarts were Dagny and Eddie, not Dagny and Jim. Dagny revered Francisco, who is two years older than her. Francisco’s ancestor, Sebastián d’Anconia, had once been
a wealthy man in Spain. He left Spain because a lord of the Inquisition, during a state dinner, told Sebastián that he did not like his thinking and suggested that he change it. Sebastián left Spain right then and there, leaving his wife and his fortune. He went to Chile, where he toiled in the copper mines and lived in squalor. Fifteen years after leaving Spain, he called for his wife, who had waited for him. A palace and life of equal wealth had been created by Sebastián in Chile. Dagny always thought that Francisco came from royalty, but Francisco corrected her, saying that the reason that their family had lasted so long was because none of them were ever allowed to think that they were born a d’Anconia. The expectation was always that they could only become a d’Anconia. Francisco told Dagny that there is only one real aristocracy, the aristocracy of money. Every summer when they met each other, Francisco would say “Hi, Slug” and Dagny would reply “Hi, Frisco.” Slug means a great fire in the locomotive. During their second summer together, Francisco, at the age of 12, began disappearing every morning. Mrs. Taggart ultimately found out that Francisco had been working as a call boy on the railroad. Mrs. Taggart asked Francisco what his father would say if he found out. Francisco replied that he would “ask whether I was good at the job or not. That’s all he’d want to know.” One year earlier, Francisco had shipped out as a cabin boy on a cargo steamer carrying d’Anconia copper. He was gone 3 months and when he returned all his father asked was whether or not he was good at his job. The youthful Jim Taggart mockingly and contemptuously asked Francisco if that’s how he spent all his winters.

The young Jim is typical of all those who mock and take pleasure in deriding those who are trying to accomplish something. Dagny and Eddie tried to learn new things over each winter to show Francisco, but when they showed Francisco, he would learn and gain competence in minutes . One year, Jim got a new speedboat for his birthday and, even though he had a personal instructor, he could barely operate the boat. Francisco was watching one day and Jim yelled to Francisco, “Do you think you can do any better?” When the boat was empty, Francisco jumped in, causing the boat to fire down the river like a rocket, straight, fast and true. On another occasion, Francisco had constructed a complex set of pulleys and ropes in order to erect an elevator which would allow all the kids to dive off a set of rocks more easily. Francisco had used a crude form of calculus to build the piece of equipment. Francisco represents pure intellect and ability. He is the brightest of all the d’Anconias to date. He takes no action without having a reason. One day, he and Jim talked about when they would run their respective empires:

Jim: Don’t you ever think of anything but d’Anconia Copper?
Francisco: No.
Jim: It seems to me that there are other things in the world.
Francisco: Let others think about them.
Jim: Isn’t that a very selfish attitude?
Francisco: It is.
Jim: What are you after?
Francisco: Money.
Jim: Don’t you have enough?
Francisco: …every one of my ancestors raised the production of d’Anconia Copper by about ten per cent. I intend to raise it by one hundred.
Jim: What for?
Francisco: When I die, I hope to go to heaven – whatever the hell that is – and I want to be able to afford the price of admission.
Jim: Virtue is the price of admission.
Francisco:
That’s what I mean, James. So I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all – that I was a man who made money.
Jim: Any grafter can make money.
Francisco: James, you should discover some day that words have an exact meaning.

Both Jim and Francisco were left smiling by the exchange: Francisco smiled because he saw something great in the world; Jim smiled because he wanted nothing to remain great. A friend of the Taggart family, a math professor, worried about Francisco, saying that Francisco was vulnerable because he had too great a capacity for joy.
Francisco went to college at Patrick Henry University in Cleveland. He nevers saw or corresponded with Dagny, even though he was close by. However, they both knew they would see each other in the upcoming summer. When they did see each other, there was a reticence between them which was strangely more intimate. She only asked about the university for a couple days. He told her that what they taught was mostly drivel and that had made made two friends. By this same summer, Jim had completed his junior year at college and told Francisco that now that Francisco also was in college, that it was time to forget about his greed and focus on ideals and social responsibilities. Francisco’s wealth, according to Jim, was not for the benefit of his personal pleasure, but for the underprivileged and the poor. Dagny was afraid of people like Jim, for some unknown but ominous reason.

{Having money allows a person to set standards. If you give it away, you set low standards for those who receive the money. If you use your money to reward excellence, then you are doing a greater service to our society because you perpetuating excellence.}

P100. Francisco and Dagny used to motivate each other to accomplish more with their lives. Francisco said “there’s nothing of any importance in life – except how well you do your work…all the code of ethics they’ll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put by swindlers to fleece the people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality on a gold standard.” Dagny agreed, but she was troubled that so few people in the world saw things the way she and Francisco did. At school, Dagny had few friends. “They dislike me, not because I do things badly, but because I do them well.” She once wondered to Francisco whether she should get D’s and be more popular. Francisco slaps her face. She felt a pleasure in the pain from his slap because she knew that he cared about her and he was trying to correct her logic. {Rand has written about another heroic woman with masochistic sexual tendencies: In The Fountainhead, Dominique Francon puts up a fight against Howard Roark, the hero of the book. She ends up enjoying being sexually dominated.}
After Francisco’s sophomore year in college, Dagny got a job as a night operator at a station and bragged about it to Francisco. Francisco playfully declared a race, to see which them would do a greater honor to their ancestors. That winter Dagny stripped her life down to the essentials: school, her job and learning.
Mrs. Taggart tried to have an influence on Dagny, who was not what Mrs. Taggart had expected in a teenage daughter: Dagny was always on the run, had no boyfriends or suitors and took pride in Jim’s insult to her, that she looked more like Nat Taggart than did the original Dagny, Nat’s wife. Dagny loved all of her work, with a purity of enjoyment which her mother thought was unnatural. All of this led her mother
_to falsely to conclude that Dagny was incapable of emotion. Her mom aske if she didn’t ever want to have a good time. Dagny said that that was exactly what she was doing.
Mrs. Taggart put on a debut for Dagny and was staggered by how beautiful and yet vulnerable Dagny looked. “The first ball is the most romantic event of one’s life,” she told Dagny, who ended up hating the ball. Everything seemed backwards to her. Why should lights and flowers and fancy clothes cause people to celebrate?, she thought. There should be something to celebrate first. People can not truly fake happiness by just being in a happy situation. Happiness and joy should be earned.
Dagny and Francisco had their first romantic encounter one summer. They played tennis one afternoon and, although Francisco had won every time before, Dagny decided that she would win this ti
Rme. Francisco knew what was happening and smiled throughout the match. He didn’t allow her to win and yet she struggled and won. Exhausted, he looked her over with a glance that said he that he really had won. Francisco knew that he could have Dagny whenever he wanted.
In the early hours of the next morning, Francisco visited Dagny at her job. He walked her home and, in a clearing, he siezed her and they made love. During their love-making, Dagny felt “rebellion and a hint of fear.” She thought she must escape but she pulled him closer. Francisco touched her with a “proprietor’s intimacy.” She didn’t know what the outcome would be, but she knew what she wanted. She thought to herself, as the passion built, “Don’t ask me for it…” She wanted him to dominate her. Francisco smiled knowing he had been granted permission long ago
. Just before he entered her, “she lay still – as the motionless, then the quivering object of an act which did simply, unhesitatingly, as of right, the right of the unendurable pleasure it gave them.” {Good sex by Rand’s logic is male-dominated but consentual. Sex is the ultimate act of mutual respect between two people.} Dagny felt “pride in her ownership of his body…the most wonderful exhaustion she had ever known…the feeling of being in love with the fact that one exists.” She also knew that nothing could be grave or serious in a universe where pain could be wiped out by sex between two mutually-respecting individuals.
Dagny and Francisco made love many times that summer. She felt most feminine when she was with him, abandoning herself to his wishes, acknowleding his power to reduce her to helplessness by the pleasure he had the power to give to her. “They were both incapable of the conception that joy
!is sin.”
During the winter of Francisco’s senior year, they saw each other whenever Francisco came to New York, which was unpredictable. They both knew they were each monogomous, even though commitment to each other was not spoken of. Meanwhile, Francisco was been restricted from being involved in d’Anconia Copper in the beginning of his career. Because of this, Francisco got a job in a copper foundry and within four years he had bought the business with the money he had earned playing the stock market.
Over the next couple years, Dagny and Francisco saw each other infrequently, although each visit was like a ray of light in her life. He drove his business like he drove Jim’s motorboat: with “dangerous, confidently mastered speed.” Her vision of him is complicated by a comment he ma
[de once, that "there's something wrong in the world...something no one has ever named or explained."
(111) Francisco's father died when Francisco was twenty-three. Dagny and Francisco didn't see each other for three years after that, although he wrote her. When she was twenty-four, she got a call from Francisco, asking her to meet him at the Wayne-Faulkland Hotel. When she saw him, Dagny could tell that Francisco was troubled by something. He asked her if she would ever consider giving up her work and leaving Taggart Transcontinental to her brother. Dagny replied that she would consider that to be suicide. They spent the night together and, during the middle of the night, he cried out that he couldn't give up. He pleaded with Dagny to help him: "Dagny! Help me to remain. To refuse. Even though he's right!" Then Francisco regained his
8composure and told Dagny not to try to help him. He told her to know that he would have a reason for the things he would do and that he knew she would damn him and also that she would be hurt by his actions. He didn't ask her to take him on faith, something he thought was "contemptible." {Rand believes that people should make decisions based upon their intellect and reason, not something as mystical as "faith."} A year after their last evening together, she began hearing stories of his decadent parties and spectacular business ventures.
(116) Back to the present, which is ten years after their last night together, she goes to visit him at the Wayne-Faulkland Hotel. She still does not understand why he has done what he has done with his life. Entering his suite, she finds him playing marbles on the floor.
The press had been convinced that Francisco was in New York to attend a society event, but Dagny believes that Francisco has come to New York to witness the impact of the San Sebastián disaster on its investors...and she is right. However, she still can't figure out why Francisco would lose millions of his own money just to see Jim and his friends lose money. Francisco's competence is never doubted by Dagny. He shoots marbles flawlessly throughout their conversation. He tells her that Jim and his friends invested in the San Sebastián mines purely on faith: They didn't do any analysis; they didn't use their brains or their judgement in making their decision.
Francisco explains to Dagny how amused he is with the Mexican government, who had called him a hero at the start of the San Sebastián mines project. Now the project is bankrupt and they are calling him a cheat, a playboy a
nd a greedy capitalist. The truth, he tells Dagny, is that the whole project was built cheaply, to break within a year. Dagny wants to know why he doesn't fight the incometents and the looters of the world. Francisco tells Dagny that his real enemies are not the looters, but the people like Dagny, the solid capitalists. He tells her with pride that his money spent on the project caused millions more in losses and that the people who profited from the construction were the looters and they will squander their money anyway. He's happy that Ellis Wyatt is the next capitalist who will most likely be broken by the San Sebastián fiasco. Dagny can not understand why Francisco, a man who used to be so committed to wealth, excellence and capitalism, has taken these action to destroy wealth. For her, his actions are the closest thing she knows to "blasphemy." Dagny asks, but Francisco will not reveal his motive.
{The chapter title, "The Climax Of The d'Anconias," refers to Francisco, who is the brightest of all his ancestors. He was to be the climax of his heritage and it is with great irony that Rand makes his crowning accomplishment wealth destruction instead of wealth creation.}

Chapter VI - The Non-Commercial
P127. Rearden is at home, unhappily dressing for his wedding anniversary party. He detests the notion that "just as one washed machine grease off one's hands before coming home, so one was supposed to wash the stain of business off one's mind before entering a drawing room." Rearden has never taken an interest in Lillian's interests or her friends and he accepts guilt for his selfishness. At the mills, Rearden doesn't blame others. He only looks for his own mistakes and demands perfection of himself. Lillian is extremely sarcastic towards Rearden. When Rearden notices some nice touch that Lillian ha
s made to their home, Lillian makes light of his comment, feigning disbelief that Rearden could have any interests outside of work. Rearden's mother also accuses Hank of being selfish for not listening to a dream of hers.
{Rearden's mother, brother and wife are people with feeble and unimportant needs. These type of needs are running amuck in our world, overshadowing the importance of the real necessities, like making companies run properly.}
{One might argue that Rearden's major flaw as a manager is his unwillingness to blame others, whether they be his wife or employees who have made mistakes. Regarding his business, I do not believe Rearden was flawed. Deming would say that 95% of the time when there are problems in a business, the system is the root of the problem, not the person who may have made the mistake. Rand was probably not aware of Deming, but she was on the same track. If Rearden had focused on the system when he encountered a problem, then he w
as acting properly. At the same time, a good manager will hold a person responsible when he encounters the 5% of the problems which are caused by people. Regarding his wife, Rearden was flawed, both for not attempting any interest in her and for not holding her accountable for her destructive and manipulative behavior.}
While dressing, a newspaper clipping drops from Rearden's shirt, describing the Equalization of Opportunity Bill which may soon be passed by the government. The bill will forbid any person from owning more than one business concern. With the economy worsening, the common wisdom is that society should insure that everyone has a chance to prosper. Rearden's lobbyist, Wesley Mouch, has told him not to worry about the bill. Rearden doesn't understand anything about politics and doesn't want to. {This is a weakness for any businessperson.} Rearden hardly has time for anything but his work, let alone politics. {Another weakness of Rearden is that he has
no extra time. Rand holds this lack of time as heroic. I believe this notion is flawed and indicates Rearden's inability to delegate.}
Rearden feels guilty about not wanting to go to the party. Guilt is a form of moral corruption, and moral corruption is "the impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do that which is right." One feels guilt when one doesn't do that which is right. Inside, Rearden feels complete indifference to the party, but something somewhere has told him that attending the party and being happy is "right." {It is another of Rearden's flaws, which he will realize later in the book, that he allows himself to feel guilty or morally corrupt. The flaw, it will be shown, is his acceptance of the premise that he should attend the party and be happy.}
The party is tedious. Lillian wears the Rearden Metal bracelet that Rearden had given her. However, because Lillian also wears other expensive jewelry, the bracelet ends up looking shoddy.
c The party is filled with people spewing forth the current philosophies which are so much drivel in Rand's mind: that life has no meaning, that man is unimportant, that reason is a "naive superstition," that things cannot be understood, that knowledge is impossible, that suffering is the essence of man, that man is essentially bad, that "our culture has sunk into a bog of materialism," that property rights are outmoded, that "need" should be society's only consideration.
Dagny enters, wearing a black dress with no jewelry, except a diamond bracelet which gives her "the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained." {Rand and Madonna would probably share some sexual fantasies.} Dagny is not enjoying the party. All she really wants to do is say hello to Rearden and tell him that she has just finished a portion of the Rio Norte Line using R
earden Metal track. When she finds Rearden, however, he is very stiff and formal. Another man joins them, noticing how radiant she looks, and Dagny wishes Hank had shown the same reaction. When Dagny turns to Rearden, he has gone.
Rearden is upset about some of the people who were invited to the party and is rude to a few of the guests. {I find his rudeness to be improper. Rand might argue that the guests, because of their "needy" philosophy, do not deserve the respect of cordiality.} Rearden and Lillian talk about the guests. Rearden realizes that Lillian gets enjoyment out of seeing him suffer at parties like this.
Francisco arrives at the party and is immediately approached by Jim Taggart, who demands an explanation for why the San Sebastián mines were a failure. Francisco says that he followed every moral precept of the day: the enterprise was begun not to make a profit, but to provide jobs; those who got jobs
got them not because of merit, but out of need. Jim is thoroughly embarassed and the other guests enjoy the spectacle of witnessing Jim's suffering.
(145) Rearden and Francisco meet at the party for the first time. Francisco asks Rearden if he, Francisco, should leave because he, Francisco, has felt so unwelcomed by Lillian. Rearden says 'no' and is impressed by Francisco's directness. Francisco completely understands the pride which Rearden feels "...because you are able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren't for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain." Despite this praise, Rearden tells Francisco that he knows he is "selfish, conceited, heartless, cruel." Francisco responds, "The only thing that's wrong in what you said is that you permit
\ anyone to call it evil." {Again, this is the fatal flaw of Hank Rearden, that he allows others to make him feel guilty for being selfish. Rearden knows he is supporting the looters and yet he allows it.} The looters know they are depending upon people like Rearden, Francsico says, and it is their aim to use guilt to make the producers not understand the truth. Rearden says, "...there's only one form of human depravity-the man without a purpose." Francisco agrees. But Rearden tells him "I can forgive all those others, they're not vicious, they're merely helpless. But you - you're the kind who can't be forgiven." Francisco responds, "It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you." {This comment will be analyzed and understood much later in the book (see P973).}
Dagny and Hank talk. Neither enjoys the party. Dagny says, "
7I keep thinking that parties are intended to be celebrations, and celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate."
(151) Conversation at the party turns to Ragnar Danneskjöld, a man who is allegedly a modern-day pirate, stealing from others upon the high seas. They say Ragnar went to The Patrick Henry University.
The mysterious name of John Galt is discussed by some old women or "spinsters." They say that John Galt was a millionaire who found Atlantis, "a place which only the spirits of heroes could enter, and they reached it without dying, because they carried the secret of life within them."
(155) Lillian is showing off her bracelet of Rearden Metal as "hideous." Dagny hears this and says that she will exchange her own diamond bracelet for Lillian's Rearden Metal bracelet. Lilli
an agrees and they swap. Hank becomes a dutiful husband to Lillian and attaches the diamond bracelet to his wife's wrist.
P157. After the party, Hank enters Lillian's bedroom feeling defeated. He has to have sex with her for his own biological reasons. He wonders why he married her eight years earlier. He knows he was attracted by her austerity and aloof behavior. Hank has never been proud of his sexual desire. He viewed it as the essence of depravity and guilt because it was the one thing that he could not control. Hank viewed women as pure, and they were especially pure if they had no physical desires. Lillian represented a woman on a pedestal that he could bring down to share in his self-guilt. {Hank married Lillian because she made him fe
]el guilty and deep down Rearden was a guilty man, about both his selfish behavior at work and his sexual desires which he considered depravity. Lillian gave him reason to feel both proud (her austerity) and guilty (her sarcasm).}
Sex was an obligation to Lillian and his desire for her was gone one week after their marriage. What did not go away was his biological urge. Hank would not allow himself infidelity because of his pledge, not to Lillian, but to the concept of marriage and “the person of his wife.”
Hank also can’t understand why Lillian married him. She didn’t want his money or his prestige or his friends. {Lillian married Hank so that she could loot off of his emotions. She makes herself feel good by bringing out his guilt. The unadmitted crux of her moral code is that destroying another person, making them feel worse, is good.
1}

Chapter VII – The Exploiters And The Exploited
P162. Dagny is at work, making plans for a bridge to be built on the Rio Norte Line out of Rearden Metal. The attitude of her engineers towards the project is very sour. One says, “…since it is an experiment that nobody has every attempted before, I do not think it’s fair that it should be my responsibility.” Dagny answers, “It’s mine.” Dagny thinks that a new material like Rearden Metal demands a new design to take advantage of its strength properties, but her engineers don’t want to take a risk.
;
(169) Dagny and Rearden are discussing the delivery of Rearden Metal. He says that he’ll do whatever it takes to roll the metal on time. He says he’s no Orren Boyle {referring to the morally depraved President of Associated Steel}. He also offers to have his engineers do a bridge design. He’s going to all this trouble, he says, not for Dagny, but for his own self-interest.
(170) Rearden is in Colorado to set up a new copper mine for Rearden Metal. He won’t buy from d’Anconia because he doesn’t trust “that playboy” Francisco. He visits Dagny at a construction site along the Rio Norte Line. As they watch Rearden Metal rail being laid, they have a capitalistic celebration: “In payment for every effort, for every sleepless night, for every silent thrust against despair, this moment was all she wanted.”
(171) Dagny wants a ride back to New York in Rearden’s plane, but he says that he’s going to Minnesota. Later, she finds that he actually was going to New York. The question is raised, why didn’t Rearden let Dagny come on the plane with him?
P172. Dagny is being driven to a meeting of the New York Business Council with Jim. She has been told by Jim that she is speaking about Rearden Metal. Jim is wavering on the use of Rearden Metal in the Rio Norte Line, mostly because the National Council of Metal Industries has come out against Rearden Metal as a threat to public safety. This council, led by Rearden’s competitor, Orren Boyle, has absolutely no data against Rearden Metal. During the ride, Dagny finds that she is actually scheduled
to publicly debate Bertram Scudder on the question, “Is Rearden Metal a lethal product of greed?” Dagny has the car stopped and gets out.
(176) Dagny stops at a diner and listens to four men prattle about how man is basically weak: “Man’s only talent is an ignoble cunning for satisfying the needs of his body…No intelligence is required for that. Don’t believe the stories about man’s mind, his spirit, his ideals, his sense of unlimited ambition.” One man believes that man is basically greedy and cares only about manufacturing and sex. Manufacturing doesn’t take any morality. Dagny asks what is morality and, accurately, one of the men responds, “Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integ
&rity to stand by the good at any price. But where does one find it?” Another man responds, “Who is John Galt?” And still another man says that he knows who John Galt is: “An explorer…who found the fountain of youth.”
P178. Rearden is discussing Rearden Metal with Dr. Potter from the State Science Institute. They are against Rearden Metal for vague but unspecific reasons. Dr. Potter attempts to buy the rights to Rearden Metal, presumably to keep it from upsetting the balance of trade within the country. Rearden will not trade, so Dr. Potter intimates that the government may simply take Rearden Metal if Rearden doesn’t cooperate. Rearden is unfazed. Dr. Potter finally asks Rearden why he is proceeding with Rearden Metal despite all the opposition. Rearden responds, “…because Rearde
n Metal is good.” {Rand is pointing out that morality in manufacturing does exist. Certain things are fundamentally good and others are bad. Efficiency is good, waste is bad. Atlas Shrugged paints a picture of the world, the good and the bad, the producers and the takers.}
P182. Dagny meets with Mr. Mowen of Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company. He is refusing to make an order of switches for her out of Rearden Metal because of the public views against Rearden Metal. Returning to her office, Eddie tells her that the State Science Institute has publicly come out against Rearden Metal, without specifically saying what is wrong with it. Eddie is in a panic; Dagny is calm. Dagny wonders why Dr. Robert Stadler, the famous scientist and founder of the State Science Institute,
ghas put his approval on the Institute’s position.
P185. Dagny visits Dr. Stadler. Stadler was once a great man. He founded the State Science Institute to promote science and helped it gain independence (and avoid all accountability). The Institute is run by Dr. Ferris, a man who has no scientific capabilities, but is exceedingly practical and political. Ferris issued the institute’s position against Rearden Metal. The Institute has a metallurgical department that has produced nothing in many years. Stadler tells Dagny about Patrick Henry University and his three brightest students, who majored in Physics, taught by Stadler, and Philosophy, taught by Hugh Akston. The three students were Francisco, “a depraved playboy,” Ragnar Danneskjöld, “a plain bandit,” and another unnamed student who “vanished without a trace – into the great unknown of mediocrit
y.”
P192. Dagny goes to their family’s inherited estate on the Hudson and finds Jim, who has run away from all the problems of Taggart Transcontinental. She tells him that she is going to take a leave from Taggart Transcontinental to complete the Rio Norte Line. She will form a new company with all new financing to complete the project. Eddie Willers will run Taggart Transcontinental in her absence. Jim wants to make sure that all responsibility and blame for everything lies with Dagny, even though he doesn’t want anyone to know that Dagny is really still running Taggart Transcontinental. Dagny tells him, “Everybody will know it, Jim. But since nobody will admit it openly, everybody will be satisfied.” Dagny decides, in defiance of all the hopeless people in the world
, to rename the Rio Norte Line as The John Galt Line. She tells Jim to keep the politicians off of her back or she might kill them, like her grandfather, Nat Taggart, who once killed a politician who asked for a permit that Taggart should not have needed.
P197. Dagny visits Francisco to ask him for an eight million-dollar bond to be used in the construction of the John Galt Line. Francisco is torn by the request, but ends up saying that he can not loan her the money. Dagny can’t figure out whether Francisco is a producer or a looter. Francisco gives her a hint that he is not like the looters when he says, “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are fa
cing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” She tells him that the Rio Norte Line is going to be called The John Galt Line. Francisco is shocked. Dagny says that she is going to fight John Galt, whoever he is.
P201. Dagny visits Rearden to discuss Rearden Metal. In passing, Rearden asks her who the bondholders of John Galt Line are. She responds that she has signed up several other major capitalists as her bondholders, including Ellis Wyatt. Rearden asks her to add his name to the list. During their conversation, it is revealed that Rearden secretly lusts after Dagny and yet is ashamed of his “degrading need.” He respects Dagny and believes tha
t to want her sexually is somehow loathesome. {For a contrary view, see Francisco’s comments on P488.}
P205. Rearden rescues a shipment of copper from an Atlantic Southern train crash, with the help of his “ruthlessly competent” secretary, Gwen Ives. Rearden’s mother arrives at his office, asking Rearden to give his brother Philip a job because he needs a job, he’s entitled to a job and because he wants to be independent of Hank. Rearden declines. She says to Rearden, “You’re the most immoral man living – you think o
f nothing but justice! You don’t feel any love at all!” {For Rearden’s mother, to love, whether or not that love is deserved, is moral.} Rearden will not back down and she tries a different angle, “If a man deserves a job, there’s no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved.”
(P209) Rearden is visited Mr. Ward of the Ward Harvester Company. Ward wants to buy steel, but has been denied by Orren Boyle, who talks about all the great things his company is doing for the country while half his plant sits idle. Rearden’s plants, on the other hand, are running at full capacity and Ward is inquiring about somehow getting a portion of Rearden’s capacity. In the middle of this conversation between two highly efficient businessmen, Ms. Ives interrupts to tell Rearden that the Equalization of Opportunity Bill has passed the Legislature. Rearden fights himself to remain calm. Until now, Rearden has never known fear
because he has always posessed the ability to act. Now he faces terror because the Equalization of Opportunity Bill will tie his hands. He gets a call from Dagny and he has recovered. He tells her about a new bridge design he’s invented to be constructed from Rearden Metal.
{The title of the chapter, “The Exploiters and The Exploited,” highlights the irony of exploitation in society. The common notion is that the “greedy” capitalists are the exploiters and that everyone else is exploited by them. Rand makes the point that the capitalists are the ones who get things done. Those who mock the capitalists are the real exploiters. They try
to make the capitalists feel guilty for being selfish, hoping that the capitalists will then bear the burden of supporting themselves and everyone who is needy.}

Chapter VIII – The John Galt Line
P217. Eddie is speaking with
- the track laborer in the basement of Taggart Transcontinental. The track laborer is asking Eddie about Dagny and is especially interested in the renaming of the Rio Norte Line into the John Galt Line. Eddie tells the laborer proudly that Dagny “…enjoys running that horrible battle single-handed and winning.”
P219. Dagny is at her office at 1 am. Another heroic businessman, Dwight Sanders, has unexplicably disappeared. Dagny is feeling a longing for a man, but not just any man, not even Francisco or Rearden. She longs for “a being of equal greatness.” In contrast to Rearden’s vacillation between pride of mind and guilt of body, Dagny believes that mind and body are linked, that her love of her work is linked to the desires of her body. When she finds that right person, then she would “…fin
d a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all things she loved on earth.” Just then she notices a man standing outside her door, “fighting himself to enter…or to escape.” {The identity of the man will be revealed later (P958).}
P221. Rearden is signing papers which will give ownership of certain of his mills to Paul Larkin in order to comply with the Equalization of Opportunity Bill (see P130). Larkin points out that other owners are getting around the law by “setting up stooges” to control their businesses. Rearden says that he doesn’t have “the time nor the stomach” to play these games. “Ownership is a thing I don’t share.” Rearden is unhappy that Larkin will be the recipient because he is spineless and malleable. Rearden thinks about his early days in business, when he possessed “…the eyes of a man who drove himself without pity t
oward that which he wanted.”
Rearden must make another gift, this one of his coal mines, to Ken Dannager, one of the doers. Rearden feels no pain about this gift because Dannager is a capitalist, a man who gets only that which he has earned.
(224) Rearden wonders why he hasn’t heard from his man in Washington, Wesley Mouch, who has been gaining prestige among the influential governmental organizations Shortly thereafter, he receives a letter of resignation from Mouch and only two weeks later, Rearden learns that Mouch has received an powerful government position. {Rearden’s naivete is difficult to fathom, especially considering the fact that he is depicted to be such a ruthless and intelligent person.}
At the Wayne-Falkland Hotel in New York, Rearden tells Eddie Willers that the first payment for Rearden Metal is due in a week. Rearden knows that Taggart Transcontinental is late on payments all over it
s system and so he offers Eddie a moratorium on payments until 6 months after the completion of The John Galt Line. Eddie wants to say thank you, but Rearden won’t accept his thanks. Rearden doesn’t want charity. He simply wants Eddie to know that it’s his self-interest which makes him give extended credit terms because Taggart Transcontinental is still the best in its business. Eddie condemns the fact that the takers, especially Jim Taggart, are profiting from the socialization ocurring in the country. Rearden boastfully says, “Eddie, what do we care about people like him? We’re driving an express, and they’re riding on the roof, making a lot of noise about being leaders. Why sho
uld we care? We have enough power to carry them along – haven’t we?” {Rand is foreshadowing the fact that these doers will soon not have the power to carry the others.}
P227. The public believes that the Rearden Metal bridge on The John Galt Line will not stand, despite the absence of any evidence. A “famous editor” once stated the prevailing opinion regarding objective facts: “There are no objective facts…Every report on facts is only somebody’s opinion. It is, therefore, useless to write about facts.” {Rand’s point is that facts, science and truth all really exist.} Only a sliver of the population see The John Galt Line as something heroic and hopeful.
Jim Taggart is in the uncomfortable position of wanting to see The John Galt Line succeed for Taggart Transcontinental and wanting it to fail because he is at heart a destroyer. The first train to run on The John Galt Line, by Dagny’s choice, is a normal freight train.
Dagn
y has a disagreement with a leader of the engineers union. He says that the engineers are afraid of the strength of the bridge and don’t want to run the train. She tells him the train is going to run, with or without the union men, but if they don’t go along, they won’t be employed ever again by Taggart Transcontinental. Dagny decides to ask for volunteers to run the train. On the morning of the deadline for volunteers, she is called to Eddie’s office for a remarkable scene: All of her engineers are in her office and have volunteered to make the run. These are the working men, with “the graying heads, the muscular shoulders.”
vThe men get silent in her presence, showing their respect for her. She bows her head to them to express her mutual respect. The scene in this room is a “verdict:” Morality exists. Work is good. Capitalism is good. Someone shouts, “To hell with Jim Taggart!” and the crowd breaks into laughter. They end up drawing lots to see who will run the train. Pat Logan wins and Dagny announces that she will ride in the cab with him.
P233. Dagny holds a press conference before the first run of The John Galt Line. Neither she nor Rearden really care about the press or public opinion. The founder of Taggart Transcontinental,
Nat Taggart, had envied only one of his competitors: “the one who said ‘The public be damned!’ He wished he had said it.” (P230) {The defiance is wonderful, although one wonders whether Rand believed that the purpose of a business was to serve its customers or to run efficient operations. While public opinion doesn’t matter, customer opinions do. Where is the line from the Fountainhead where Roark says “I don’t build for my customers; I have customers so that I can build.”} Dagny is asked by the press why she has built The John Galt Line. She refuses to make any excuses, apologies or claims of being motivated by social welfare. She says that her sole reason is “…to make a pile of money…” Rearden shows up at the press conference and announces that he too will be riding in the cab.
P236. July 22nd arrives, the day of the inaugural ride to begin in Cheyenne. Dagny has forbid Jim Taggart from attending. She believes that “…the sight of a
n achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.” Reporters are present, asking questions which indicate their disbelief that the line and especially the bridge will hold. One reporter asks Dagny, “Tell me, Miss Taggart, what’s going to support a seven-thousand-ton train on a three-thousand-ton bridge?” “My judgement,” she answered.
P239. The train rolls out and is led by Pat Logan, a quintessential doer. “He had the ease of an expert, so confident that it seemed casual, but it was the ease of a tremendous concentration, the concentration on one’s task that has the ruthlessness of an absolute.” Dagny looks at Rearden, who is looking at the rail. The rails are his, not because he owns the company, but because those rails are a part of him. He cares about the Rearden Metal rails like his own child. Dagny sees that his sense of ownership is “in his eyes.”
k Dagny feels safe on the train because she understands how it works, not because she has faith that it will work.
Rearden looks at Dagny in the same way he looked at the rails, with a look of ownership. He wants her sexually. {Rearden finds Dagny attractive because he respects her intellect and ability.}
Dagny looks around at the car she is in and the products holding it together. She can’t fathom the notion that the excellence which created this railroad could be regarded by society as evil.
As the train rolls onward, a scene of pride unfolds: the right-of-way along the track is being guarded by the sons of Taggart employees, as well as retired employees. Stationed with guns at every milepost, they each salute the train as it passes by. More and bigger crowds greet the train along its way, hearkening back to the era of Nat Taggart, when the first tr
ains moved across the country and people recognized the stature of the achievement.
Rearden continues to watch the rail, interested no one’s opinion but his own. He concludes that the metal works. Then he looks at Dagny. She is aware of his gaze and enjoys displaying her body to him.
The train hurtles onward, at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, through the city of Denver and along rocky grades.
Dagny loves machines, and the motors especially, because they are functional. Machines are not “causeless” or “purposeless” as people are. “Every part of the motors was an embodied answer to “Why?” and “What for?” – like the steps of a life-course chosen by the sort of mind she worshipped. The motors were a moral code cast in steel. They are alive, she
thought, because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power – of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.”
As they cross the bridge of Rearden Metal, Dagny hears in her mind the Fifth Concerto by Richard Haley, the glorious piece of music which exudes hope and ability. Immediately after crossing, Rearden simply declares, “That’s that.”
They reach Wyatt Junction and are met by the young oil baron, Ellis Wyatt. As Dagny is led by Wyatt through the station, a reporter asks her if she will give the public a message. Wyatt points to the train and says on behalf of Dagny, “She has.”
Dagny and Rearden end up together and alone at Wyatt’s home. They begin to kiss. Dagny wants him because they are in the same battle, fighting against the looters, who torment them because of their abilities. Their sex is violent, “like an act of hatred.”
WRearden dominates Dagny, who laughs at the fact that she has brought the “austere, unapproachable Hank Rearden” to the table of physical desire. Dagny knows that her putting up a fight only makes his victory greater. He throws her into a room and she stands waiting to be taken. She turns the light off, but he contemptuously turns it back on. Each time she shows her desire for him is like a blow to him. He is angry and yet triumphant. He asks if she wants it and she simply says yes. Their sex is a union of their physical and, more importantly, their intellectual beings. “…they had moved by the power of the thought that one remakes the earth for one’s enjoyment, that man’s spirit gives meaning to insentient matter by molding it to serve one’s chosen goal.” Sexual union is “…in answer to the highest of one’s values, in an admiration
Vnot to be expressed by any other form of tribute, one’s body becomes the tribute, recasting it – as proof, as sanction, as reward – into a single sensation of such intensity of joy that no other sanction of one’s existence is necessary.”

Chapter IX – The Sacred And The Profane
P253. The morning after Hank is seething with anger. He hates himself for his lust and hates Dagny for being no better than he. He tells her, “I don’t love you. I’ve never loved anyone. I wanted you from the moment I saw you. I wanted you as one wants a whore – for the same reason and purpose. I spent two years damning myself, because I thought you were above a desire of this kind. You’re not. You’re as vile an animal as I am…We were two great beings, you and I, proud of our strength, weren’t we? Well, this is all that’s left of us – and I want no self-dec
eption about it…I held it as my honor that I would never need anyone. I need you. It had been my pride that I had always acted on my convictions. I’ve given in to a desire which I despise.” Until this point, he “…had never committed an act that had to be hidden. Now I am to lie, to sneak, to hide.” All that he wants is Dagny and he’s willing to give up everything he has for her.
(255) When he finishes, Dagny bursts out laughing. She is not offended and says that he may have her any time he wishes. “…I do not want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it’s to me that you will come for that lowest one of your desires. I am an animal who wants nothing but that sensation of pleasure which you despise – but I want it from you. You’d give up any height of virtue for it, while I – I haven’t any to give up.” Rearden feels guilt for his sexual desires, but Dagny does not. For Dagny, sex is a natural extension of h
]er mind. She recognizes that he “owns” her. “Did you call it depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as your guilt, and I – as my pride. I’m more proud of it than anything I’ve done, more proud than of building the Line. If I’m asked to name my proudest achievement, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it.” With that, they have sex again. She laughs and he wails.
P256. Jim Taggart is walking aimlessly down a New York street after meeting with the Taggart Board of Directors. Both the Board and Taggart hold themselves and others in contempt. While they are all happy about The John Galt Line, they are much more concerned with political and superficial issues. Jim sees a small dime store that he believes will go out of business soon and the thought gives him pleasure. He thrives off of the losses
and hardships of others. Inside the dime store, he meets a nineteen year-old salesgirl named Cherryl. She has heard about Taggart Transcontinental’s accomplishments, which have been credited to Jim. She falls in love with him because of something that he is not. Cherryl is fundamentally a doer, a positive and constructive person, but she is not intelligent enough to initially see Jim for what he is. Cherryl read somewhere that “…great men are always unhappy, and the greater – the unhappier.” She uses this logic to justify her admiration for him. Jim, who doesn’t ever directly identify his feelings, takes stock of the situation and thinks to himself: “The damn little fool means it.” This gives him pleasure because he intends to prey off of her goodness. Cherryl comes from a family of looters. She knew that if she stayed with them, she would “rot all the way through.” She left her family so t
jhat she could earn her keep in the world.
Cherryl asks Jim why he is so unhappy because she believes that everyone “has the right to be happy and proud.” Jim doesn’t agree and begins railing on Rearden, whom Jim thinks is unfairly claiming the invention of Rearden Metal. Cherryl says that Rearden has earned all his profits, just like Jim. She then remarks what a wonderful person Dagny must be. This sets Jim off: “She’s a hard, insensitive woman who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not for any great ideal, but only because that’s what she enjoys doing. If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it? I’m not so sure it was great – buidling that Line for all those prosperous industrialists in Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted areas who need transportation.” {This is socialism distilled to its ugly essence.
The heroes are not the doers, but the needy.}
Jim happily recounts to Cheryl the misfortune suffered by his friend Orren Boyle, who owns a steel mill and drank away his sorrows when Rearden Metal became a success.
Jim hates Dagny “because she thinks she’s so good…Nobody’s any good. When a man thinks he’s good – that’s when he’s rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he’s done.”
Cherryl can’t understand why Jim is unhappy. Being naive, she asks Jim if he’d be happier if the Rearden Metal bridge had collapsed. Jim denies it, even though it’s the truth.
Jim walks Cherryl home and Cherryl indiscreetly thanks him for not taking advantage of her. In his vile manner, Jim asks her if she would have slept with him. She is embarassed and runs inside. He feels satisfaction, “…as if he had committed an act of virtue…”
P267. Rearden enters Dagny’s apartment like he o
wns it. He tells her how the press and so many others are glorifying her as an untouchable woman. When he takes her for sex, again she is laughing out of joy while he is contemptuous, guilty, stern and lustful. Afterward, Dagny tells him that she has been with only one other man, when she was seventeen. She won’t say whether she had loved that man and she refuses to reveal his identity (See P642). They make love again.
P269. Mr. Mowen of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company is watching another company move to Colorado, speaking to a man standing nearby (who happens to be Owen Kellogg). More and more businesses are moving because of bad business conditions on the East coast and because the Equalization of Opportunity Bill has made owners invest all their assets in the location most likely to bring them profit. Mowen thinks that companies should “have some feeling for thei
r native state, some loyalty…” He thinks that the old order and the older businesses should have some sort of guarantee to remain in business. Colorado’s government, he says, is the worst in the country because “It doesn’t do anything for the people. It doesn’t help anybody.” {This is exactly the type of governments that is wanted by capitalists and supporters of laissez faire like Rand.} He bemoans the competition he is receiving from the Stockton Foundry, located in Colorado. His business should have some sort of seniority and be protected from “dog-eat-dog competition.” It’s not fair, he says, that Rearden has gone and screwed up the steel market. Mowen can’t get metal from Boyle and, while he’d like to get metal from Rearden, Rearden is only selling to “his old friends,” like Wyatt and Danagger. Mowen sums up his socialistic business philosophy, saying, “I’m entitled to my share of that Metal.” But things are going to change, Mowen says, because the legislature is
planning a bill which give the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources a greater hand in running the economy. The Bureau is run by Wesley Mouch, Rearden’s former lobbyist.
P273. Dagny is in her apartment, looking over New York. The John Galt Line has been reclaimed by Taggart Transcontinental and renamed back to the Rio Norte Line. Rearden arrives from a banquet in his honor. Although he is now a celebri
ty, he
s not happy about it. The people who gave the banquet did it only because they believe that that is what they are supposed to do. Rearden really wanted to celebrate, but the banquet attendees didn’t fundamentally appreciate Rearden Metal. The looters “idea of the height of glory is to deal with people who need them. I can’t stand people who need me….They say it like beggars who use a tin cup as a claim check.”
Dagny and Rearden decide to take a vacation together. They joke about what Dagny would have done if he had demanded that she sleep with him in exchange for getting Rearden Metal. She says that she would have done it, if Hank was the buyer. {Rand is saying that love is a sale. Co
ntinued sales come from continued mutual respect.} Rearden asks Dagny if she will wear the bracelet of Rearden Metal which she took from Lillian and Dagny agrees, concerned only for Hank about what others might think.
P279. Driving on vacation together, they are a picture of the beauty of nature and the beauty of the car they are driving. They visit several abandoned plants. Rearden remarks how he is beginning to like the wilderness, because it represents man’s opportunity for conquest. Then he discovers that what looked like wilderness is actually an old gas station which has been overgrown with weeds. Dagny requests that they visit a motor company plant which closed seven years ago. The company was The Twentieth Century Motor Company.
OThey make their way on what is left of a road to what is left of the town which used to be adjacent to the factory. The town is called Starnesville, named after the founder of the motor company, Jed Starnes. A few people still live in this remote town, which is a capitalistic version of hell. Man has been beaten in this town and nature has won. A man is pushing a plow by hand. These people have reverted backwards in time and progress. Those who remain have lost all capacity “to feel anything but exhaustion.” Homes are filthy and so are the people. The factory is up on a hill and, in looking for a path to the factory, Rearden offers a man a ten-dollar bill. The man, “devoid of greed,” replies indifferently and blankly that he and those in the community don’t need money any more. {Rand is pointing out that greed and self-intere
st are good because they drive economic growth. The town is the result of a system where need is rewarded, instead of merit.}
Their windshield is smashed by a child who shrieks with laughter at his destruction. A decrepit and swollen woman finally helps them with directions. “…The vacant eyes, the stooped shoulders, the shuffling movements…gave her the stamp of senility.” The woman is thirty-seven, only two years older than Dagny.
The factory is rusty and has been looted of most valuables. Neither Hank nor Dagny are happy about walking around this factory, but they decide to do it anyway. “It was like having to perform an autopsy on the body of one’s love.” Dagny finds her way into a room that “looked as if it had been an
experimental laboratory.” Dagny sees a coil of wire sticking out of a pile of rubble. She pulls on it and finds that it is part of something akin to a motor, although she has never seen a motor like this. She calls Hank to show him how this motor had been designed to take “electricity from the atmosphere, convert it and create its own power as it went along.” Dagny is incredibly excited by the motor, while Rearden is not. Dagny vows to drop every other thing she is doing to find the designer of the motor. She knows that unlimited motive power would give her and her railroad the ability to make incredible profits. However, Dagny can not rebuild the motor herself. She must find a person to do it for her and hope that the motor
designer is still alive.
Rearden figures that the motor, if it had been built, would have meant “about ten years added to the life of every person in this country” because it would have given the country “an unlimited supply of energy.” Dagny is frightened by the fact that the whole factory was gutted, except for the one most valuable item. As darkness comes, Dagny notices ironically that the people in the ramshackle town below are using candles for light.
{The concept of unlimited power raises issues. If power was free, would man still be driven to accomplish? If man did not have the necessity or the drive to accomplish, would he be better off, more happy?}
{The chapter’s title, “The Sacred And The Prof
ane,” has many meanings. Sacred means “Worthy of respect.” Profane means “Marked by contempt or irreverence for what is sacred.” One meaning is the difference between Dagny and Hank’s views of sex. For Dagny, sex is sacred, while for Rearden it is contemptuous. A second meaning is the definition of greed. For Dagny and the capitalists, greed is sacred, but for the looters greed is profane. A final meaning of the chapter is in the motor and the town: the motor is sacred, yet it is ironically abandoned. The waste of human lives in the town is profane.}

Chapter X – Wyatt’s Torch
P292. Dagny and Hank go to a nearby town to investigate the origins of the factory
. The last legal owner was The People’s Mortgage Company of Rome, Wisconsin. Mark Yonts ran the factory, although according to the clerk, Yonts “wasn’t the kind that ever operates anything. He didn’t want to make money, only to get it.” The company formally ended its existence when Yonts simultaneously sold the company to one group and pledged it to a bank as collateral on a loan.
P294. Dagny and Hank go to Rome, Wisconsin, to visit Mayor Bascom, the man who had sold the factory to Yonts. Bascom believes that the only way people ever get rich is by looting, taking or swindling. The factory never operated during his tenure as owner. He had bought the factory, “…to squeeze whatever [could] be squeezed
out of it…”, out of a bankruptcy auction put on by the Community National Bank in Madison. The bank was owned by Eugene Lawson, “the banker with a heart.” The factory was run by a corporation called Amalgamated Services, Inc.Lawson now has a job with the government in Washington.
Bascom makes a poke at the fact that Rearden and Dagny aren’t married. Rearden gets angry. Dagny asks for an explanation. Bascom says, “Married people don’t look as if they h
/ave a bedroom on their minds when they look at each other. In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.” After they leave, Rearden seethes with anger. He is guilty about their relationship and yet angry that Bascom knows it is an “affair.” Dagny, on the other hand, doesn’t believe their relationship is anything to be guilty about. She believes she is being virtuous and enjoying herself. When Dagny calls Eddie to get some Taggart people to come out and fetch the motor, Eddie tells her that she must come back at once.

P298. Back in New York, Dagny finds several groups attempting to limit Taggart Transcontinental. The unions wants speeds limited and lengths of trains reduced; Orren Boyle and a group of industrialists want to limit the production of Rea
rden Metal; Mr. Mowen and another group want to give everyone a “fair share” of Rearden Metal; Bertram Scudder wants to pass a law forbidding Eastern firms to move out of their states. Jim Taggart is absolutely unwilling to do anything about these proposed actions. He says that Taggart Transcontinental survived the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule, so they should be able to survive this as well. Dagny responds that she was the one to save Taggart Transcontinental the last time, but she won’t be able to do it again.
The motor is retrieved and stored in a vault far below the Taggart Terminal. Dagny realizes that the only hope of saving her railroad is to find the builder of the motor. With an operational motor, she could solve all her other other problems. To continue fighting the unions and looter industrialists would be a waste of her time. “She could not function to the rule of: Pipe down – keep down – slow down – don’t do your best, it’s not wanted!”
P301. Rearden is fighting battles against both the propos
(ed laws and his suppliers. Paul Larkin is not delivering iron ore on time. He has excuses, but not apologies. He could ship the ore by boat, both cheaply and quickly, but Larkin chooses to ship by rail so that he can help his friend, Jim Taggart, to generate revenue on an underused rail line.
Z Larkin says to Rearden, “I am sure you wouldn’t understand any consideration other than dollars and cents, but some people do consider their social and patriotic responsibilities.” Rearden is helpless in a system where value is not the measure of exchange. Rearden’s mind shifts gears and he thinks about his affair with Dagny. He believes that he is no more righteous than looters like Larkin. “…One does not bargain about inches of evil…Who am I to cast the first stone?” However, he wants Dagny and if this is the price he must pay, then he is resigned to it.
(304) He comes home one night and tries to sneak into his bedroom without awakening Lillian in hers. Lillian stops him in the hall and says she is lonely and would just like to “chatter.” She wants to talk about her society friends and asks if he’s interested in that. He says he’
9s not. She says that “…real devotion consists of being willing to lie, cheat and fake in order to make another person happy – to create for him the reality he wants, if he doesn’t like the one that exists.” She also believes that virtue is giving something to someone who doesn’t deserve it. “To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved.” She believes that love is “self-sacrifice…but I don’t expect you to understand it. Not a stainless-s
teel Puritan like you. That’s the immense selfishness of the Puritan. You’d let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you’d have to be ashamed.” Unknowingly, Lillian has hit on Rearden’s guilt about his affair with Dagny. She says that he looks younger and healthier. This surprises her in the face of all his troubles at the mill. She says that his potential financial losses do not concern her {because she is not a materialist}. Rearden considers and begins feeling guilty about the possibility that Lillian’s casual insults towards him are actually her muted cry for love.
(306) Lillian drives a dagger in Rearden’s heart when she tells him that he once promised to make “my happiness the aim of [his] life.” She says that it is his responsibility to figure out what will make her happy. He is welshing on his duty, where if it was a “load of iron ore,” he would never reneg on his responsibility. “The sanctity of the contract” is what he stands for and yet he hasn’t kept his part of the contract. He feels revulsion at her maliciousness. And yet he also feels guilt because of his transgression.
(308) She tries to put her arms around him and he violently rejects her. “Do forgive me, I was merely trying to do my duty. I thought you were a sensu
alist who’d never rise above the instincts of an animal in the gutter. I’m not one of those bitches who belong in it.” Rearden is frustrated. He asks Lillian, “…what purpose do you live for?” She says that she lives for him, but she will not elaborate, other than saying it is not for sex. {Rand is implying that Lillian lives to loot off of Hank’s guilty conscience, just as Jim loots off of the goodness of Cherryl.}
P309. Dagny meets in Washington with Eugene Lawson
. Lawson does not give any straight answers, but he paints a clear picture of the looter mentality:
o “…I lost everything I possessed in the crash of that bank. It seems to me that I would have the right to feel proud of such a sacrifice.”
o “If people needed money, that was enough for me. Need was my standard…”
o “My rewards were the tears of gratitude…”
o “The engineers? No, no…It’s the real workers that interested me. The common men…The men of calloused hands who keep a factory going. They were my friends.”
o “Motor? What motor, Miss Taggart? I had no time for details. My objective was social progress, universal prosperity, human brotherhood and love.”
o “What I lost was mere material wealth. I am not the first man in history to suffer for an ideal. I was defeated by the selfish greed of those around me. I couldn’t establish a system of brotherhood…”
(312) The only information Dagny gets from Lawson is that the President of Amalgamated Services was Lee Hunsacker,
who now lives in Grangeville, Oregon. As she is leaving, Lawson declares, “I am perfectly innocent…since I lost all of my own money for a good cause. My motives were pure. I wanted nothing for myself. I can proudly say that in all of my life I have never made a profit!” Dagny responds, “Mr. Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable.”
P313. Lee Hunsacker is another looter, living in a slovenly house. He is filled with anger and excuses for why the factory went bankrupt His kitchen has dishes piled in the sink and stew made from cheap meat simmering on a dirty and greasy stove. Even his stirring of the stew is slovenly: he “…went through the motions of stirring the stew, hatefully, paying no attention to his performance.” {This picture of inefficiency can be contrasted with the efficiency of Pat Logan running the train or, later in the book, the skill of the philosopher Hugh Akston, running
a wayside diner.} Hunsacker is supposedly working on an autobiography. He complains that he never had a break, even though he was born to a prestigious family. The Starnes heirs had bankrupt the factory when Hunsacker and a group formed the Amalgamated Service Corporation to buy and run the factory. They needed a loan and approached Midas Mulligan.
(315) Dagny had heard of Midas Mulligan, the banker and investor with the golden touch. “It’s because I know what to touch,” Mulligan had once said. Mulligan was a consummate capitalist. Some called him a gambler, to which he replied, “The reason why you’ll never get rich is because you think that what I do is gambling.”
Anyone who ever mentioned personal need in a meeting with Mulligan for a loan was summarily dismissed. When Mulligan was asked “whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity,” he said that he could: “The man who uses another’s pity for him as a weapon.” {Pity as a weapon is what the capitalists are rebelling against and on what the looters are counting.} Seven years earlier, Mulligan had vanished and liquidated his bank at the same time.
(317) Hunsacker relates how Mulligan had turned him down for the loan, saying that he, Hunsacker, was incapable of running the factory, let alone a “vegetable pushcart.” Hunsacker
-brought suit against Mulligan. He used a law, intended for day laborers, which said that people were forbidden to discriminate against another individual when that person’s livelihood was at stake. The trial was overseen by Judge Narragansett and Hunsacker’s case was quickly dismissed. Hunsacker appealed the case and won. Mulligan was given three months to comply with the ruling, but within that time he disappeared. Within six months of the appealed decision, Judge Narragansett also had disappeared.
(319) The factory declined further when Nielson Motors opened a plant in Colorado, offering a motor of equal quality at half the price. Hunsacker tells Dagny, “We couldn’t help that, could we? It was all right for Jed Starnes, no destructive competitor happened to come up in his time, but what were
we to do?” He tells her that Jed Starnes, the founder, had two sons and a daughter who moved to Louisiana after “they’d wrecked the factory.” As she leaves, Hunsacker spills his stew all over the floor.
P321. In Durance, Louisiana, Dagny discovers that two of the Starnes heirs are still alive. Eric Starnes, “one of those chronic young men who go around whining about their sensitive feelings,” had killed himself when his ex-girlfriend got married. He had slit his wrists in the newlyweds’ bedroom. The chief of police remarks to Dagny that the Starnes are the sort of people who are “clammy and bad.” Gerald Starnes lives in a flophouse. “I wanted to do good for humanity,” he says to her. “Hah! I wish they’d boil in oil.”
(322) Ivy Starnes lives in a droopy, stagnant bungalow.
She has a “pallid face,” a “petulant mouth” and “…her eyes were two lifeless puddles of water.” She tells Dagny, “My father was an evil man who cared for nothing but business. He had no time for love, only for money…We were defeated by the greed, the selfishness and the base, animal nature of men…We put into practice that noble historical precept: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Everybody in the factory, from charwomen to president, received the same salary…” Dagny tells herself that she is listening to and seeing pure evil. Ivy tells Dagny how the plant was ruined within four years. The engineers had left first and by the end it was a “sordid mess of policemen, lawyers and bankruptcy proceedings.” But Starnes has moved on: “I am learning the emancipation of the spirit, as revealed in the great secrets of India, the release from bondage to flesh, the victory over physical nature, the triumph of the spirit over matter.” {Rand is poking fun at the Eastern p
hilosophies. Matter matters, according to Rand.} Dagny becomes angered and intimidates Ivy into telling her that the head of the research laboratory was William Hastings, the second man to quit the factory. He moved to Brandon, Wyoming.
P324. Dagny arrives in Wyoming and is greeted at the house of William Hastings by a woman who is clearly a doer: “The woman who opened the door had graying hair and a poised, distinguished look of grooming…” {The characters in Atlas Shrugged are
either competent or incompetent, committed to excellence or not committed to excellence.} Dagny finds that William Hastings died five years ago. His widow tells Dagny how Hastings had loved his work and when he quit, he was “calm, self-confident and happy, for the first time since we’d come here.” He had decided that he would never work anywhere else. Hastings had spent his remaining days doing research, except for one month each summer, when he went somewhere he did not tell his wife. Mrs. Hastings knew that he was
working on a very important motor, “an invention of incalculable importance…He told me only that he had a young engineer who, some day, would up-turn the world. My husband did not care for anything in people except ability.” One day, when she was to pick up her husband at the train station, she got a glimpse of both the young engineer and much older and very distinguished man. That older and distinguished man she later saw, completely by chance, in a roadside diner in Wyoming.
P327. Dagny finds the roadside diner and studies the man behind the counter: “There was an expert competence in his manner of working; his movements were easy, intelligently economical.” Dagny offers the cook an outstanding job with the railroad, but he refuses. The diner is closing because an important business, the Lennox Foundry, is also closing. It turns out that this cook is Hugh Akston, the man who taught philosophy to the famed three studen
ts along with Dr. Stadler. Akston refuses to answer specific questions about the young engineer who designed the motor, although he does acknowledge that he has the answers. Akston tells her to give up her search, that she will never find him until he chooses to find her. Moreover, he tells her that “the secret you are trying to solve involves something greater – much greater – than the invention of a motor run by atmospheric electricity. There is only one helpful suggestion that I can give you: By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner – check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
(331) Dagny asks about the third, unnamed student of his at Patrick Henry University in Cleveland. Akston replies that his name is unimportant. However, Akston is extremely proud of all three students. He
Bbelieves that they all ended up as his disciples and not Stadler’s. As she is driving away, Dagny notices that the cigarette she was given by Akston has a wonderful taste and has, as its emblem, the sign of the dollar stamped in gold. She saves the cigarette stub to show to the cigar stand vendor at the Taggart Terminal.
(332) On the platform in Cheyenne, waiting for the Eastbound train back to New York, she learns that the previously proposed laws have now been passed by the department of the economy, headed by Wesley Mouch. Speeds and length of trains have been limi
ted; steel production has been limited; consumers of steel have been given a right to a fair share of Rearden Metal; all manufacturers have been “forbidden to move from their present locations, except when granted a special permission…”; a moratorium has been passed on all interest and principal of railroad bonds; the State of Colorado has been assessed a special tax because it is “the state best able to assist the needier states to bear the brunt of the national emergency.”
(334) Dagny is stunned. “…So long as she was still in existence she would know that action is man’s foremost obligation, regardless of anything she feels…” She decides to call Ellis Wyatt, because she is worried that he will quit under the weight of higher taxes, but h
e is not home. She thinks of The John Galt Bondholders, who will lose significant money because of the new laws. The train makes an unscheduled stop to witness the flaming Wyatt oil fields. Ellis Wyatt has destroyed his oil fields and vanished.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Entering The World Of Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden
• Atlas Shrugged —
• Atlas Shruggs – iv The john galt line