Posted on 04/25/2009 7:44:08 AM PDT by Publius
Synopsis
Things in America have gone to hell in a handbasket.
There is a new man at the Taggart Transcontinental board meeting, Clem Weatherby, who is from the government. Whether he is a guest, adviser, or the government’s rail czar, no one knows or dares to ask.
Jim wants to raise freight rates, but Weatherby cuts him off and explains that Wesley Mouch wants to discuss the unions’ demand for a pay raise and the shippers’ demand for a freight rate cut. While Mouch likes Jim, he feels it might be necessary to sacrifice his personal feelings and friendships for the welfare of the public. The unions can call on five million votes, and with the current inflation the members need something to offset the cost of living. But the shippers can’t survive with the current freight rates either.
Jim is aghast because the National Alliance of Railroads has taken a stance against the unions, and all signatories are required to stay on board. Weatherby wants Jim to drive a wedge into the Alliance for Mouch’s sake. Jim fears what a court would do, but Weatherby explains that Mouch controls the courts. But the railroad can’t afford it, Jim moans. Weatherby asks Jim if he wants the government to tell him how to run his railroad.
The board asks Dagny for her opinion, but she declines and says her written report is sufficient. The chairman says it will do no good to play the blame game, i.e. assess responsibility. One practical man on the board says it’s time to reopen the rules about train length and speed, but Weatherby cuts him off. Everyone now understands that it would be best to tear up the John Galt Line and use the Rearden Metal rail for the rest of the network. Dagny tells the board that the Taggart system’s days are numbered. Weatherby stops them by saying they need government approval to close a branch line, but if Jim gives Mouch something in return, like the raise for the unions... Jim still can’t break with the Alliance, so Weatherby explains that the government could easily call the Taggart bonds. Jim is furious, stating that the freeze was an obligation, a contract, but Weatherby says there are no obligations except the necessity of the moment. Jim has to take the deal.
Upon leaving the board meeting, Dagny runs into Francisco, who has been waiting for her. He surmises what has happened and asks her to go out with him for a drink.
At the bar Francisco slowly begins the recruitment of Dagny Taggart. She talks about her ancestor Nat Taggart and the travails of building the bridge across the Mississippi. Francisco asks, “What would Nat do?” Dagny thinks he would fight. He asks about the John Galt Line, and she says she will tear it up.
Dagny wonders what Francisco has done to Hank. First, Hank liked him, and now Hank wants to kill him. Francisco explodes, “He was the only man – with one exception – to whom I could have given my life!” He won’t tell Dagny who the other man is except that he has given his life to him. Dagny spots the telltale question, “Who is John Galt?”, scratched in the table. He tells her that Galt is Prometheus – who changed his mind. Torn by vultures, he broke his chains and withdrew his fire until the men withdraw their vultures.
Dagny and Hank tour Colorado looking to pick up whatever machinery can be found in the state’s closed factories. Colorado has gone to hell in a handbasket.
A crowd lines up at the station for the last passenger train on the John Galt Line before its removal. Dagny runs into people who scream that the rich should be destroyed, and Hank saves her by leading her to her private car.
Lillian Rearden has lunch with Jim Taggart in New York. Jim tells Lillian that Hank needs to have his attitude adjusted, or really bad things will happen to him – and her. The men in Washington think that Jim has some pull with Hank, and they are leaning on him to bring Hank into line. Jim is furious at Hank’s performance at his trial; Lillian was supposed to get him to toe the line. Lillian says she didn’t double-cross him but tried to deliver Hank and failed. The only thing that Lillian wants out of the meeting is the knowledge that she had the clout to get Jim Taggart to meet with her.
Lillian goes to Hank’s suite at the Wayne-Falkland and calls the mill, asking Hank’s whereabouts. He is on the Comet, she is informed, so Lillian asks for flowers to be delivered to his compartment at the stop in Chicago. But the flowers go undelivered, and Lillian deduces that Hank is on the train with his mistress. Lillian meets the Comet at the Taggart Terminal and sees Hank walking alone. Then she spots Dagny exiting her private car, and the penny drops.
At the hotel Lillian confronts Hank, and he admits that Dagny is his paramour. Lillian now understands Hank’s performance at the trial! She demands that Hank give her up, but he refuses. Hank quietly tells Lillian he will keep Dagny even if it means Lillian’s life; he wants a divorce. Lillian goes ballistic, accusing Dagny of bedding every man on the railroad; Hank looks like he is going to kill her and tells her she is cruising for a bruising. Lillian won’t grant him a divorce. She leaves, and Hank feels a sense of deliverance.
The Friends of Wesley Mouch
Buzzy Watts, Chick Morrison, Tinky Holloway and Kip Chalmers. What a collection of names! There is a sense that Rand is playing with the reader here, but in fact she is making a point. Nicknames like this – along with Muffy and Buffy – are common at Ivy League schools and especially at Yale University. You can be sure that at Patrick Henry University, nobody was called Tinky!
Without being obvious about it, it is clear that Rand held the Ivy League in low esteem. As the story progresses, the reader sees the disasters caused by the hubris of Ivy League dilettantes with no experience of the real world. One turns to humorist Art Buchwald’s 1974 comment that the Harvard Business School should be shut down as a threat to national security.
Discussion Topics
Did you catch the results of the last election?
As usual, stunning job.. Many thanks.
Doesn't sound like such a bad concept for an economy actually. Don't like the goobermint that drove them to it, but you have to admit, the mind that thought up VIP shopper cards and similar stupidity would be laughed out of town in that world.
This is, certainly, "guerrilla" capitalism in action, but it does have a cleanliness and clarity that we will encounter again in three chapters or so in the Atlantis that has been hinted at. It will be interesting to compare the two at that point and see if we can discern a difference. I'm inclined to state that there is not, but we've a way to go before we can reach any reasoned conclusion.
Make that six chapters or so. And my apologies to all for hinting at a spoiler.
My husband was telling me about "The Folly of FDR", which he is listening to during his commute. He said that FDR was actually doing some really ridiculous stuff. They had the economics backwards, and noted that wages were high in good times, so therefore, they mandated high wages, thinking the wages were the engine. It was also the time of the Dust Bowl, and many people were starving, yet the government was destroying crops to keep prices high, because during the boom times, prices were high. Must have been the high prices that caused the boom times.....
In many ways, Rand was not prophesying, she was regurgitating what had already gone before under FDR.
By suspending the mark-to-market rules, they are preventing the banks from writing down or writing off the bad mortgate loans. Why? Because inflated real estate prices were the engine for the prior prosperity. Must have been the high prices that caused the boom times...
But when it finally comes, Galt's Gulch will turn out not to be a geographic place at all, but a state of mind. A secret brotherhood much like the Resistance in Nazi Europe.
Anyway, great work again fellows!!
The reaction to weather-based disaster reminds me of the vastly different responses to Katrina between the people in New Orleans (ruled for life by socialists) and the people of Mississippi (relatively free). Still even now, I continue to hear pleas for help to the “Katrina victims”. The reactions to the people who remained in New Orleans seemed to be of 2 varieties - first is the actual, literal looters who just took what they could get to while the rightful owners were gone, and second are those who just sat there expecting someone to rescue them (much more like AS). As I was reading this chapter, this reminded me very much of the New Orleans experience.
In Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida you had much more the expectation that people were self-sufficient, at least for some amount of time, and responsible for their own response. I think the people of these states are and will be much more self-sufficient than those who have grown up in a dependency culture. Let’s hope this dependency culture doesn’t get so pervasive that the pockets of self-sufficiency disappear.
I don’t think it’s a case of being uneducated or uncaring. But I am trying to figure out exactly why so many of these people are so completely uncritical of what’s going on in their own country. I was visiting my parents today and they have a very good friend who is just completely ga-ga over BO. There is nothing he can do that she will disagree with. Of course, she’s in her 80s and has never voted anything but a Democrat her entire life.
I have relatives who have graduate degrees who simply cannot have a back-and-forth discussion of anything in politics, but are absolutely 100% sure that anything BO does is best and he’s the smartest president we’ve ever had. The left is so incredibly closed-minded that I’m not sure what will have to happen to break them of this, if anything. Maybe an AS scenario, but I’m not even sure that would do it.
The release of the memos describing what we did to “torture” the Gitmo prisoners (haze would be a better term) is a stark example to me. If they’re going to do that, fine, but don’t redact the parts of the memos that describe the information that was gathered (keeping that classified). There seems to be a general inability on the left to honestly discuss and review these issues from a moral and/or logical standpoint. Whatever BO says is right by definition. May God have mercy on our souls...
And back then it was the opposite of what it is now. I remember being told in grade school that we were all going to freeze to death in the next great ice age.
And back then it was the opposite of what it is now. I remember being told in grade school that we were all going to freeze to death in the next great ice age.
I know, I know, it's Wiki. (caveat emptor)
Spoiler warning - judicious perusal required.
Submitted for furthering the group discussion.
There is nothing he can do that she will disagree with. Of course, she’s in her 80s and has never voted anything but a Democrat her entire life.”
That disease is part of what is going to kill the USA.
I call the left “LIEberals,” and with good reason.
As you pointed out so clearly.
only a effeminate ivy leaguer would have such a name today he'd be a member of GLAD
Tinky Holloway....how about Alger Hiss?
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