Timp Cave N.M. is all the way on the left of the mountain from this angle, this is what it looks like here in winter, and the cave is at the 6,000 Ft level, about a vertical mile below the summit. The town of Provo is down in the fog.
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 still haven’t figured out what Hanks social rank was prior to him “making it” .
Holy gosh and golly, Savagemom, you're making me blush!
That means that Hank's mother is a poser.
Hank started young and threw himself into his work. We know nothing of his father, except that at this point he must have been dead for a long time. His mother and brother are total leeches and in that kind of family, he would not have known that manipulation - as a substitute for actual family love - is NOT the norm. Hank's focus was on producing and succeeding. At this point, he doesn't KNOW real love or real friendship and, apparently, doesn't know that he doesn't know.
Strong people who think for themselves are often the victims of their own families when that family bond is not nurturing but toxic and destructive. That is the hardest bond to shake off, but some times the most necessary. Hank needs an awakening...
Worst adaptation of a book in movie form ever.
My mom gave me a copy of The Fountainhead when I was in architecture shool because she thought it was about an architect.I've been a fan of Rand ever since.
In what year do you suppose the book is set?
For example, they could have flown in a Gulfstream, which opened the year of publication. Taggart or Dagny could buy a good ride.
You don't have to go as far as those three... the current administration, their supporters in the media and the AGW crowd are plenty proof of this mentality.
This is the root of the sexual relationship between Hank and Dagney versus the sexual trist between Jim and Betty from last week.
Hank and Dagney exchange value in their sexual encounters and make the act more valuable in the process. Jim and Betty f*%k each other... no value brought into the act... no value gained in the act.
I'd like to take this in another direction. How many times have we the public seen movie stars testifying to Congress about scientific, medical, business, or social issues - and worst of all, these people are taken seriously?
Another poster mentioned Rachel Carson. Yes, she helped, through her book Silent Spring, ban DDT. In doing so, how many deaths can be laid at her feet from the out of control mosquito population in Africa? Did anyone stop to examine her credentials to make sure she was in the best position of knowledge to lead this crusade?
Let's look at Al Gore. What is in his background that makes him an expert on global warning? What about Meryl Streep wtih her tearful begging before Congress? Oh my, the list can go on and on.
The public ignores hard science, and embraces the position of celebrities because, well, daggone it, they SOUND so good and they LOOK so good and they APPEAR to be so knowledgeable. But ... they aren't. And those that put any credence to their screeds are foolish and dangerous
Careful. Hank and Dagny don’t consummate things until next week’s chapter.
If I remember correctly, he never had “social rank” because he started at the bottom and worked his way up.
However, once he achieved money, he couldn’t be ignored, but, was condescended to, by those who have no regard for blue collar workers.
Rachael Carson is the biggest mass murder ever.
She makes Stalin and Hitler look like pikers.
Most of the “shabby” elite won’t even look at anyone from a working class back ground.. How did he ever get into a social circle that Lilian belonged too.
She is frugal...so it couldn’t been for the money and things that he could buy her.
It could be set now. It doesn't matter. Almost no one flies his own jet. Jet planes require a ton of money, and employees to operate and maintain. You can't just fly the things once in a while when you feel like it. You can't even just fly a simple single engine plane once in a while when you feel like it. You have to be "current" which for most people means doing a lot of non-productive flying, particularly if one is instrument rated. (And if one is not instrument rated in an area with weather such as we have near NYC, one can't really depend on being able to fly when one wants to go someplace, especially someplace far away.)
ML/NJ
Something similar to this in the seemy parts of the black community. If you excel, people accuse you of trying to "act white" as if achievement and blackness are somehow incompatible.
Let's take those one at a time.
Long -- Nothing need be said
Boring -- I disagree. I find the characters interesting and thought provoking and the plot line engaging.
Poorly written -- definitely hard slogging at times, but worth it because of the underlying themes. There's more to writing a serious novel than assembling sentences that go down like ice cream.
I hate the deal she is willing to accept to get the line built. The endeavor is spun off so Taggart can distance itself, and she is expected to raise her own capital and assume all risk of failure. No problem so far. But....she has to sign that if it's a success she'll transfer ownership back to TT and get no more than reimbursement of her costs. She is expected to assume all the risks in return for no upside if she succeeds. I've turned down contracts like that. She shouldn't have let Jim get away with that, no matter how bad she wanted the line built.
Yeah, Rand's definitely got her kink on. I'm a couple chapters ahead and you're all in for a treat.
Ping to Chapter 7.
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