(Fist stuffed firmly in mouth) - you are so right. I just re-read that chapter. Let's just say that it's very much in character for the guys doing it.
I'm doing my best to stay only a couple of chapters ahead this time through so I won't pepper the thread with spoilers, and it's getting harder and harder. I can see why people give up on the novel - it's taken, what, 500 pages to get the characters in place and the plot established to where you actually can anticipate move and counter-move. But we're there at last. The novel is like one of Dagny's trains, slow to pick up speed and impossible to stop once it does.
I sometimes wonder if Hank Rearden and his company are modeled after John Rockefeller and the Standard Oil trust.
Some interesting parallels there.
Well put, Mister Thedrill... I made comments myself similar to those upthread, that Rand 'really needed an editor' and such. But I found myself later in the book increasingly enjoying the very longwindedness of it. The last chapter was agonizing inasmuch as I knew that the story was at long last going to have to stop and I really didn't want it to. I wanted it to just keep going. Like Dagny's trains indeed.