Posted on 02/14/2009 11:27:03 AM PST by Publius
Synopsis
Eddie hands a newspaper to Dagny; it has a most interesting story. The People’s State of Mexico, upon inspecting the expropriated San Sebastian Mines, discovers that they are devoid of copper and utterly worthless. Dagny asks Eddie to call Francisco at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel for an appointment.
What follows is an extended flashback into the childhood of Dagny, Eddie, Francisco and Jim at the Taggart estate on the Hudson.
Francisco got a job at Taggart Transcontinental before Dagny, working illicitly as a call boy at a station on the Hudson Line. Each intended to eventually run the family business. Unlike those d’Anconias who increased the family holdings by a mere 10%, Francisco’s goal was to double them.
Francisco went to Patrick Henry University of Cleveland, the most distinguished institution of learning left in the world, but Francisco did not find all the courses interesting. He made only two close friends at college. (A major plot point for later!)
One incident shaped the relationship between Dagny and Francisco. When Dagny suggested that she get poor grades in order to be popular, Francisco slapped her – and she liked it.
Dagny began the competition with Francisco by taking a job as night operator on the railroad at a nearby station while only sixteen. She went through life without male admirers, and her idea of a good time was working on the railroad. After a formal ball, she noted that she could have squashed ten of the men she had met. It was in her freshman year at college that Dagny and Francisco became lovers.
Francisco not only went to college, but by playing the stock market he amassed enough money to buy the copper foundry where he had been working secretly at night. Following college, Francisco worked for his father. One night, meeting Dagny in New York, he said, “There’s something wrong with the world.” A few years later he told Dagny not to be astonished by anything he did in the future and asked her to leave the railroad and let it go to hell under Jim’s stewardship. He warned her that the next time they met, she wouldn’t want to see him. Over the years Francisco morphed into a worthless playboy squandering the d’Anconia fortune.
Returning to the present, Dagny goes to Francisco’s room at the hotel and finds him playing with marbles on the floor like a child. Dagny has figured out part of what Francisco intended with the San Sebastian Mines swindle. He has hurt the looters’ government of Mexico and his American investors, but Dagny can’t penetrate to the heart of what he has done.
Dagny administers a shock to Francisco when she brings up the Fifth Concerto of Richard Halley. Francisco avoids a direct answer and says that Halley has stopped composing.
Francisco lays out the reaction of the Mexican government, which had made promises to its people to be delivered by the confiscation of the mines. Now the government has to blame the greedy capitalists. The miners’ town he built was made of shoddy material and will be gone within a year. He has cost the railroad and his investors millions. Taggart Transcontinental will fail, and Ellis Wyatt will be the next to go under. He tells Dagny as she is leaving that she is not ready to hear the reasons behind what he is doing.
The Purpose of This Chapter
We’ve met Dagny, Hank and their enemies. We’ve heard about Francisco, but we’ve never met him. Now we find out about the long history of Dagny and Francisco, both in business and on a personal basis. We also find that Francisco is involved in some kind of project aimed at destroying certain people, companies and countries, but we don’t know why. (This is the book’s plot.)
Landmarks
The Wayne-Falkland Hotel is based upon the real life Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan.
The Taggart estate is based upon one of many Vanderbilt holdings, all of which were built by the descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt of the New York Central. “Commodore” Vanderbilt himself lived modestly in lower Manhattan. Both Vanderbilt and James Jerome Hill were models for Nat Taggart.
Ayn Rand and Sex
There are no children in this book; the plot is about adults and adult matters. It is only in this chapter that we meet our characters as teenagers and we find Francisco and Dagny as lovers.
Francisco’s slapping Dagny after that comment about doing poorly in school to gain popularity requires some history about the period. In that era popularity was considered more important than academic excellence. Smart people weren’t popular, which is why young Ronald Reagan hid his questing mind in the disguise of a backslapping athlete. Even as an adult, Reagan hid his cerebral qualities from others, which is why he was characterized incorrectly by Clark Clifford as an “amiable dunce”. Understanding this in its historical context, Dagny’s comment to Francisco was not totally out of bounds.
However, when she is slapped, Dagny finds that she likes it. There is an undercurrent of precocious sexuality and sadomasochism in that slap. When she and Francisco lose their virginity together, the prose turns purple.
“She knew that fear was useless, that he would do what he wished, that the decision was his, that he left nothing possible to her except the thing she wanted most – to submit. She had no conscious realization of his purpose, her vague knowledge of it was wiped out, she had no power to believe it clearly, in this moment, to believe it about herself, she knew only that she was afraid – yet what she felt was as if she were crying to him: Don’t ask me for it – oh, don’t ask me – do it!”
This is Rand’s updated version of the “aching need” that appears in The Fountainhead. People who are devoutly religious become queasy at this passage and again when Rand waxes philosophical.
”’Isn’t it wonderful that our bodies can give us so much pleasure?’, he said to her once, quite simply. They were happy and radiantly innocent. They were both incapable of the conception that joy is sin ... She knew the general doctrine on sex, held by people in one form or another, the doctrine that sex was an ugly weakness of man’s lower nature, to be condoned regretfully. She experienced an emotion of chastity that made her shrink, not from the desires of her body, but from any contact with the minds who held this doctrine.”
Rand here disposes of the puritanical branch of Judeo-Christianity in a few well honed sentences. She not only supports the Dagny-Francisco relationship but condemns those who would criticize it in the name of a narrow, outmoded morality. Exceptional people – the Creators – make their own rules, which may well be a tip of the hat to Nietzsche.
But Dagny has had no other partners this far into the story, and it appears that Francisco has not either. Both remain true to each other, defining their own concept of chastity. This elevates sexuality into something sacred and transcendent, which is another theme of the book.
Patrick Henry University
Don’t confuse this fictional school with the very real Patrick Henry College of Purcellville, VA.
One of the most enjoyable Marx Brothers movies was “Horse Feathers”, a 1932 musical comedy that revolves around the football rivalry between Darwin and Huxley colleges. The opening number has Groucho and a chorus of professors singing:
I don't know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway;
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
Colleges of the Twenties were profoundly conservative institutions, hard as that may be to believe today. The concept of academic freedom was by no means guaranteed, be the professor tenured or not. The Great Depression was to change all that, and soon the economic theories of Karl Marx began to replace those of Groucho Marx. The great institutions of the Ivy League led the way.
It would appear that even during the Forties and Fifties, Rand held a low enough opinion of the Ivy League to locate her ideal university in Cleveland, an industrial city not known as a great seat of learning. In fact, the business of Cleveland was manufacturing.
Naming a university dedicated to reason to Patrick Henry, however, is just as problematic as naming a fundamentalist Christian college after the same man, which is what happened in Purcellville. Henry does not fit the stereotype of either a man of objective reason or of religious faith. His life and legacy are far more complicated.
Patrick Henry belongs to the same group as Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams, revolutionaries who lit the flame that George Washington kept from being extinguished. Like Adams, Henry had failed in business many times, but while Adams became a wizard at the art of political propaganda, Henry turned instead to the law. As a lawyer, Henry stood for home rule and economic self-determination, siding with the ancient British tradition of being taxed by one’s own legislators. He further argued that colonial legislatures could not assign that right to Parliament. Because Parliament had long exercised a general right to tax the colonies, Henry’s assertion was considered treasonous.
In addition to the above principles, Henry’s intellectual justification for separation from Britain revolved around corruption. There is a tendency to look at that period of American history and see a halcyon era when corruption didn’t exist. In fact, the colonial governments of early America were every bit as corrupt as some state governments today. Wherever there is a pipeline of government “cheese”, there are mice and rats attempting to divert some of that “cheese“ into their private larders. For Henry, gold and silver were too important to be diverted into the mouths of grifters, looters and moochers, which is why he became the scourge of corruption in Virginia politics. He could personally fight corruption in Williamsburg, but the corruption in London was so entrenched it could only be fought by separation. Rand must have viewed Henry as an early American model.
Following the Revolution, Henry opposed the adoption of the Constitution, arguing that it gave the federal government too much power, and his opposition led to the Bill of Rights. Yet a decade later, he executed a complete turnaround and switched to the Federalist Party, backing Washington, Adams and John Marshall, and going so far as to argue that the Jefferson-Madison Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, supporting a state’s right of nullification, would lead to civil war. He died the same year as George Washington.
Some Discussion Topics
...but you're right...
In the book, the few people that remained in Starnesville, Wisconsin don't exactly fit what you've described, but IIRC, they were less than enthusiastic about Hank and Dagny offering them money for directions to the Twenty First Century Motor Company. They knew they were poor but didn't really seem to care anymore.
You're a Navy man, so I'll use Navy terms. As I pointed out in an earlier thread, for every great skipper there's an equally great exec. I've always thought that Eddie got a raw deal at the end, which I suppose is a half-spoiler. There are those who are not moochers and looters, who are not Creators, who are not faceless, anonymous people living lives of quiet desperation, but who are critical to the Creators not getting bogged down in minutiae. They deserve a shot at Valhalla, or least a suburb of Valhalla.
It will, in fact, survive Atlas shrugging very nicely both in fiction and in the real world.
I call it the quadri-metallic standard. Gold and silver for commerce, and lead and brass to protect them.
Ooops. sorry.
ok... I’m getting ahead of the narrative. I promise, that’s the last spoiler.
I'm stealing that for a tagline. ;-)
I’ve made a habit of reading “The Fountainhead” every 15-20 years (since age 16, I think). Only been able to do Atlas Shrugged twice. And yes, some of those speeches are heavy-lifting.
I’ll try to catch-up on this thread.
Dittoes on this comment. I’m just catching up, Publius, but you’re doing a fantastic job of summarizing some pretty dense material.
Ahhh..... I now see why she portrayed the poor as helpless in the face of adversity.
The either-or nature of AS didn't sit well with me due to my own expectations. I can see that contrasting the extremes helps the reader to make judgments that otherwise might be difficult if the focus is too narrow.
It reminds me of the 'exaggeration game' that I play with my kids. It's a whole lot of fun and the kids find out what ignoring reality can lead to :)
SuperLuminal posts - “The time is nearly here to simply “take” back acccess to our unalienable rights and re-institute the original Constitutional Republic. Let the marxist Tories once again populate another country. This one is ours.”
Here! Here!
Back To The Top!
Tatt
I agree. I think this falls into the either-or conundrum. All the characters in AS are either winners or losers. There seems to be no 'in between'.
I call it the quadri-metallic standard. Gold and silver for commerce, and lead and brass to protect them
Great line! That's a keeper.
I've spent the past half-hour reading and re-reading that sentence, and I've come to realize that there is a universe of truth, both open and hidden, in that sentence.
People can be poor in material resources or poor in spirit. Some are only poor in one, and some in both. Those who are poor in material resources but rich in spirit will do well. But those poor in both areas will end up like the folks of Starnesville, simply not giving a damn.
The most damaging thing you can ever do to any one is convince them that they are a victim.
Victims have no power, no ability to better themselves.
They are eternally waiting for a handout.
Thank you FDR and Johnson’s great society.
We saw it demonstrated in vivid color during Katrina.
I’d have packed a back pack, hitched my 2 dogs to their leashes and my family and I would have walked out.
During the great depression people were more self sufficient. And if you had a plot of land you could always feed yourself from the garden or from hunting.
Today if it wasn’t for McD’s the victim folks would starve.
Well put.
JJ
Kids would detract from the story...She is very deliberately addressing adult issues ..
Kids are an affirmation of life and a symbol of the future.
She is making the point even if in deliberately that the falling system has no future.
And Gresham's Law applies to victims, too. Bad victims chase good victims out of the system. That's where we are today.
College these days is the gold standard and it shouldn't be.
Remedial reading in college has been the standard since the 70’s.
My grandfather was one of the most accomplished man I've ever met with a 4th grade education.. He taught himself algebra and watch making. He was a big Dem but he hobnobbed with governors and senators.
In those days graduating from high school was the exception not the norm.. in the 40’s there were still medical schools and law schools that existed outside college.
The industrial base still persisted, most people worked in factories or in skilled trades..Young men apprenticed in a trade to learn the construction arts instead of spending time uselessly in high school.
It’s the teach a man to fish idea.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll spend the whole damn day fishing.
And drinking beer.
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