Posted on 02/28/2009 7:49:58 AM PST by Publius
Synopsis
We meet Mr. Mowen of Amalgamated Switch and Signal of Connecticut, who needs training from Rearden’s men before he can handle Rearden Metal, all the while bleating about whether the metal is real or a fraud.
In Colorado, Dagny is having problems with the Rio Norte Line. Ben Nealy isn’t up to the job, and she and Hank have had to buy up bankrupt companies and shuttered plants to make the necessary equipment. Her chief engineer balks at reinforcing an ancient bridge with Rearden Metal.
Ellis Wyatt shows up and gives Dagny some good advice on upgrading the facilities for Nealy’s crew. Dagny takes Nealy into his work car and tells him what is to be done and how.
Hank Rearden arrives in his new car, a Hammond of Colorado, and his attitude toward Dagny is back to where it was when they were working together at his steel mill. They spar verbally, and Dagny is pleased at her emotions. Hank designs a new bridge of Rearden Metal on the spot with an estimated cost of less than half what her chief engineer has projected. He intends to confront the doubts about the safety of Rearden Metal by building an entire bridge out of it.
Hank is in Colorado looking for a copper mine because he doesn’t want to deal with Francisco. Hank and Dagny have a sense of accomplishment, but when Dagny asks Hank for a lift in his plane to New York, Hank tells her he is flying to Minnesota. When she shows up at the local airport and finds there are no flights out that day, she discovers that Rearden has taken off for New York after all.
Back in New York, Dagny and Jim go to a dinner and conference at the New York Business Council where Dagny is scheduled to speak about Rearden Metal. Jim is in a tizzy. The National Council of Metal Industries, headed by Orren Boyle, has condemned it as a threat to public safety. The union is not sure it wants its members to work with it. A convention of grade school teachers in New Mexico has passed a resolution that children should not be permitted to ride the Rio Norte Line because of it. As Jim complains, Dagny notices that every good, reliable piece of equipment on the streets of New York has originated in Colorado.
Dagny is furious to discover that Jim has tried to get Dan Conway to sell his railroad to Taggart Transcontinental; Jim’s rationale was to use Phoenix-Durango’s steel on the Rio Norte Line to avoid using Rearden Metal altogether. Jim wants to bid for Conway’s rail, but his looter friends at the National Alliance of Railroads are all attempting to get their own hands on it.
But it gets worse when Dagny discovers that she is there tonight to debate Bertram Scudder on nationwide radio on the topic, “Is Rearden Metal a lethal product of greed?” Dagny says the question is not debatable, and she jumps out of the car. She takes refuge in a diner in the shadow of a deserted ruin of an office building and orders coffee. An old bum gives Dagny a sermon on nihilism; in the middle of it the counter boy comments, “Who is John Galt?” Another bum tells Dagny yet another legend of Galt, this one about finding a fountain of youth and being unable to bring it back.
Dr. Potter of the State Science Institute sits in Hank Rearden’s office and asks him not to upset the economy by introducing Rearden Metal. Hank is not bothered by the disapproval of his metal by the Institute. Potter believes that if the metal is not a physical danger, it’s a social danger to the country. He offers to buy the rights to the metal from Rearden for a lot of government money to keep it off the market. Rearden refuses, and Potter issues a veiled threat about Rearden needing friends in politics and government.
Mr. Mowen bails from the project and refuses to make any more switches of Rearden Metal because too many people don’t like it.
Dagny discovers from Eddie Willlers that the State Science Institute has warned people against using Rearden Metal but has not really said why. Taggart stock has crashed, Nealy has quit and the union won’t let its members work with the metal.
Dagny visits the Institute in New Hampshire to meet with Dr. Robert Stadler, once the head of the Physics Department at Patrick Henry University and one of the nation’s leading scientists. Stadler has not even read the Institute’s report on Rearden Metal. He knows that there is nothing wrong with it but says that there are other “non scientific” factors. He is concerned that the Institute, with all its government funding, has not been able to come up with anything useful. But Rearden did, and that makes the Institute look bad. The survival of the Institute is more important than the survival of Hank Rearden.
Stadler tells Dagny of the three star students he and Hugh Akston shared at Patrick Henry University. One star was Francisco, the other was Ragnar Danneskjøld – and the third was a man who is probably a second assistant bookkeeper somewhere. (No spoilers please!)
Dagny finds a boozed-up Jim hiding at the old Taggart estate on the Hudson. Jim has been using his pull in DC, first to get the government to seize Dan Conway’s railroad, and then to convince the Alliance to let Conway run his line for another year. But Conway has refused. Dagny tells him she is going to start her own company and build the Rio Norte Line for Taggart Transcontinental on a turnkey basis. Eddie Willers will take over Operations. Dagny will call her company the John Galt Line.
But Francisco will not help fund the line, nor will he tell Dagny why. But he hints that her premises are wrong and that she must reach the correct conclusion herself. When Dagny suggests that she crawl, Francisco comes over to her and tenderly kisses her hand. Realizing he has given away too much, he puts on the act of a cad. He is horrified to discover that Dagny is going to name the line after John Galt, and he tells her that Galt will come to claim it.
Dagny meets with Hank to confirm the orders for the John Galt Line. The financiers are the Colorado industrialists whom the line will serve. Even Ken Danagger of the Pennsylvania coal company is in, and Hank signs on. Wyatt and Danagger have already agreed to purchase Rearden Metal simply because of the State Science Institute’s partial condemnation of it. Stockton Foundry of Colorado is going to finish the switches that Mowen wouldn’t make. The union won’t try to stop the line because there are so few union jobs available.
While Dagny reads the structural specifications for the bridge, Hank indulges in a violent sexual fantasy about her.
An Atlantic Southern freight train carrying copper for the Rearden mills slams into a passenger train in New Mexico, and the railroad can’t do anything but make excuses. Hank puts together a rescue effort that gets the copper moving again, although Hank decides to move his ore in the future via Taggart Transcontinental.
In the middle of all this, Hank’s mother shows up at the mill and asks him to give his brother Philip a job that he doesn’t deserve. Hank effectively throws her out.
Hank now tries to find some steel for the Ward Harvester Company of Minnesota, but he is interrupted by the news that the National Legislature had enacted the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. Wesley Mouch is nowhere to be found.
Hank suddenly comes up with a new design for the rail bridge. He calls Dagny in Colorado and tells her about his new design, which will outperform any bridge ever built and cost no more than a culvert. There is a hint that Dagny has broken into tears.
The State Science Institute
Rand knew about the National Science Foundation, headquartered in Arlington, VA, because it had been founded by an act of Congress in 1950. Every year it funds about ten thousand grants for research and development. It performs no actual research but acts as a clearinghouse for grants.
Rand’s State Science Institute, headquartered in New Hampshire, is a research and development facility; her model is the Department of Agriculture’s laboratory system. These facilities engage in pure research and occasionally come up with something useful. (I worked at one such lab over 40 years ago.) But the State Science Institute has not been able to come up with anything useful, and it views Rearden Metal – or anything created by the private sector – as a threat to its existence. Bureaucracies are terribly protective of their turf.
Some Discussion Topics
I'm fully behind you on that one. That was my philosophy as well when my daughter was little. As long as the consequences wouldn't kill her, I let her experience them. And you know what? At three she was cooking in the kitchen with the adult size knives, using the stove that had a fire inside instead of a light bulb (though she DID tease me about cooking up the cat) and now at eighteen she has a ton of common sense and is very self reliant and chooses and achieves her own goals.
BilltheDrill: What Rand has running through Hank’s head as they speak about his bridge is a rape fantasy...
Eh, I disagree. I don't think it is so much a rape fantasy as it is just a fantasy of a raucous encounter. Juxtapose it with Lillian picking up her book afterwards, without a hair out of place....
What does this say about Rand's philosophy of sexuality? Maybe that it shouldn't be a "duty" or a "chore". See Jimmy Taggart and Betty Pope. Were there ever two more bored people? Could they actually have enjoyed it?
OK, so Rand has an edge about her. Not so much that I'd call it kinky. I mean, no monkeys or clowns or anything. Just a lot of, ahem, enthusiasm.
Alright, now what insight do we get into Hank? Dagny sees him as ascetic. Whoa! I guess not. Lillian has tormented him about his base nature and base needs. He is a split personality. He has a passionate nature, but, like any good Catholic, feels it has to be suppressed. He hates that part of himself, because he cannot control it entirely.
p.s. getting the Catholic thing from personal experience....
I believe the correct, Presidential way of saying it would be, "I screwed up."
Carry on :)
Mea culpa. I recall in a 'former life' coming home from the salt mines and turning on the tube. I remember watching on the evening news a group of welfare dependents marching on Washington and demanding their 'rights'. The thought that came to mind was 'how do they manage to take off work so they can go protest like that!' Ha ha, that's a long time ago. In some ways it is reassuring to me. It is possible to enlighten yourself about what is really going on. Along the same lines, I have worked in manufacturing, both union and non-union shops. My take on the dumbed down crowd is that many are too busy just trying to make ends meet. They don't have the time to go march on Washington or learn how to manipulate the press. When they start getting hungry and cold _and_ have lots of free time, watch out.
I should clarify - I give the average person much more credit than this. It is Dr. Stadler and the other libs in charge in the book and in real life who have this opinion about people.
And that's hard to do in this day and age - people look at you like you're a horrible person if you let your kid go out without a coat (If he decides he doesn't like being cold, he'll remember to wear it next time, won't he?) They try to take away the knife, even if the child is using it carefully. It must be gratifying to see the results now that your daughter is older. I have a few years to go - I hope mine are equally self-reliant at that age.
No, I knew that’s what you meant, and that’s what I was disagreeing with. My point is that he’s actually partially right, and you don’t have to attribute stupidity or a childlike nature to them to explain it, just apathy, ignorance, and fatigue.
That's not hard. If you want hard, try being one of those people minding my business.
Besides, different people DO feel cold differently. I think kids metabolisms are enough higher than ours that they don’t feel the cold like we do. Doesn’t seem to hurt them any, anyway.
I see...
I sometimes wonder how much of the dumbing down is by design, to keep the Sheeple ignorant and apathetic. Maybe I’m getting into tinfoil hat territory, but... sometimes I wonder.
I think it’s equal parts that, and that the educators are liberals themselves and they don’t think anyone should feel bad because they don’t achieve as much as someone else, so the curriculum is lowered to the level of the minimum student so everyone’s achievement is roughly equal. Somebody once said about Communism “Everybody is miserable to exactly the same degree”. (Obviously he wasn’t including the ruling elite)
RE coats and busybodies - good for you! It still irks me when I get the disapproving looks and comments - and my kids HATE to wear coats (or shoes, sometimes). If you have a good zinger for those people, I’d love to borrow it.
Nothing special. Just a stern look and an inquiry if they know something about my child’s physiology that I’ve overlooked in the “X” years I’ve been caring for them. And that the kids seem to still have all their arms and legs so my parental malpractice must not be too bad.
Here’s a zinger for you. She was homeschooled for a while and if anyone expressed concern about her “socialization” I would look at them and ask why the heck I would want to raise a socialist!
LOL!
Fortunately, the people we run into at baseball, soccer, basketball, Scouts, martial arts, theater club, Robotics club, Youth Group, etc. don’t give us grief about socialization...
If Atlas Shrugged is working as a template for what is going on now, it is the role of the Democrats to use all the nostrums of the New Deal to fix our problems -- and to fail miserably. Only then can a whole new paradigm be unveiled, and it may turn out to be a very old paradigm.
Still Thinking: I'm not sure I agree with that.
Let's go a layer deeper. Remember the calendar displayed on a skyscraper and erected by the mayor of New York in the first chapter? I posed a question about that, and a few FReepers got it. (Go back to that thread if you don't remember the dialog.)
I don't remember it, so I'll have to go back and review. I'll try to post about it this evening.
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