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 don’t like “interesting times” one bit!
Of course not. But if you didn't like the book, why not form a cogent argument as to why it has zero virtues, in your opinion? I'll give you that it's long, and I'll admit that some of the "speeches" could be shortened, but that takes little away from some of the book's key messages.
You don't have to agree with me, or like the book. But surely, given your FR web page, there must be something in it that would appeal to you. Have you actually read the book?
Wonderful analysis. I always look forward to your contribution.
He has yet to answer when I asked.
I have nothing against anti-commies, but Libertarians and Anarchists aren't any better, at least as far as coming up with some kind of viable government.
Preyed on my mild too.
And how do you think your guy is doing so far?
I’m tugging my forelock in your general direction.
I think Rand would have used a high-heeled pump in the book, with some description of Dagny's instep and dancer-like legs.
She had some interesting fetishes.
People like Obama and FDR come to power because people who were supposed to be pro-productivity like Hoover and Bush, actually weren't and screwed up royally.
And Ronald would approve of what is happening now?
Culturally this was the heyday of the big Musicals..
Betty Grable, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astair, were cultural icons.
That also takes the sex angle into consideration.. Good girls didn't do it for any other reason than love.
This was before no fault divorce and you didn't commit adultery without tremendous pressures and tremendous consequences.
So biology comes in to play...You really can't help the feeling of the flesh and who you are attracted to but you can choose not to act on those feelings.
That's what Hank did when he refused Dagney the lift to NY.
Proximity leads to temptation..he was avoiding it.
Hank explored it in the chapter with the party..He despises his wife and he despises his physical need for her but he doesn't go outside his marriage.
I'm not sure Hank was always twisted or if his parasite of a wife twisted him but he is.
She certainly did. I started to write a post about what's probably really going on late at night in Dagny's old office between her and Eddie Willers...Dagny with a whip, "Down on your knees, you little worm!"...
But then two Mods came and carried me bodily out of the thread and tossed me out the door. Again. Dang it.
I'm not sure that having a movie version of a book is a measure of anything. Would this mean for you that The Fountainhead was a superior novel because there was a movie version?
ML/NJ
Perhaps these “violent” references to sex are meant to show the more “animal” nature of man that we try so hard to deny. In nature, males compete for mates and the most worthy gets to “take” the female. On the other hand, the female allows herself to be taken by the winner because she is also winning a prize. She knows her worth, and he knows his, and there is no pretense about it.
If you really want to scare yourself, read “The Fountainhead” and pay close attention to the description of the newspaper in the book.
Then compare that description to MSN.com.
Hank was twisted by society before he met his wife.
Remember, someone as driven and brilliant as a Hank Rearden would be looked down upon by his “social betters,” which his family considered themselves part of, even though Hank’s wealth is what enabled his family to join that society.
Hank Rearden gave his word, in marriage, to a woman who didn’t appreciate his efforts. His character is such that he follows through on his commitment, even though his wife and family are unworthy of it.
Before World War I, good girls didn't do it at all until their wedding night. They would "spoon" on Mom and Dad's sofa, while Mom and Dad retired to the bedroom -- and when they were just (metaphorically) inches from intercourse, they would rush to get married.
In the Twenties, that changed and in a big way. Good girls did it, usually in the rumbleseat of their boyfriend's Huppmobile. Automobiles became bedrooms on wheels to the point where, in East Texas, the KKK would patrol the local parking spots and administer the horsewhip to teenagers caught in flagrante delecto. (Talk about family values!)
In the Thirties, sex outside of marriage became a protest of bourgeois morality, and in the Forties, it was de rigeur because a girl didn't know if her soldier boyfriend would come back alive or not.
In the Fifties, after 30 years of non-stop social change, people went back to pre-World War I standards. In New York, divorce was impossible unless one could prove adultery -- which led to hired photographers breaking down the doors to love nests. (In the Sixties, that all went out the window.)
I'm not sure Hank was always twisted or if his parasite of a wife twisted him but he is.
It was his wife. It becxomes clearer later in the book.
The movie version of The Fountainhead wasn't all that good.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.