Posted on 05/09/2009 7:41:37 AM PDT by Publius
Synopsis
Eddie Willers sits down with the Anonymous Rail Worker in the Taggart corporate cafeteria and updates him.
The Anonymous Rail Worker says he’ll be gone for a month; he has taken a month off every summer for the past twelve years.
Hank Rearden walks from his mill down a dark road to Philadelphia where his new apartment is located. He is intercepted by a man of proud bearing who asks to speak with him. He is not there to rob Hank but to give him money that was taken from him by force – and it’s a bar of gold! If robbery is done in open daylight, then restitution must be done at night. The money has been held in trust for Hank for years, and the man took an oath to wait. But after seeing what had been done to Hank, he felt he needed to violate that oath and approach him now. It’s Ragnar Danneskjøld!
He tells Hank one can be a looter or a victim, but he chooses neither. He is merely complying with the system the looters have established. He’s a pirate working for the day when Hank can make a profit from Rearden Metal. Hank doesn’t see that day ever coming; he sees Ragnar as a criminal and prefers that Ragnar had chosen to disappear like the Colorado industrialists and Ken Danagger. Ragnar smiles, lighting up the night, and tells Hank he has a special mission of his own: to destroy Robin Hood. Robin stole from the rich to give to the poor; Ragnar is stealing from the thieving poor and giving back to the productive rich. Robin Hood is the symbol of need, not achievement. Ragnar is the cop who retrieves stolen property and returns it to its rightful owner; he deals in gold, deposited in a gold standard bank, held in the names of victims like Hank. Ragnar’s goal is to return the last twelve years of income taxes to Hank; he has sources in high places and knows just how much the government has taken. The gold is deposited in the Mulligan Bank, which is not in Chicago; Ragnar thinks that Hank will soon know its true location. The gold is intended to start the rebuilding of the world out of the ruins after the final collapse.
Ragnar confirms that the story about the destruction of Orren Boyle’s steel mill in Maine is true. No looter will be permitted to make Rearden Metal – ever.
Hank decides not to take the gold and threatens to call the police if Ragnar ever appears again. Hank says he will live by his own standards, but he is interrupted by the arrival of the police who are making sure Hank is safe; Ragnar backs into the woods. The police say they are looking for a man who is driving a beat up old car with a million dollar engine; Hank says he hasn’t seen him. The cop spots Ragnar, and Hank passes him off as his bodyguard; the police leave. Ragnar smiles, says he hopes to meet Hank again soon, and vanishes. Hank picks up the gold bar and walks on.
Kip Chalmers, a government bureaucrat running for the California legislature, sits with his campaign manager, mistress and a British novelist in a private car attached to the Comet as it goes through Colorado. Chalmers is unhappy with the condition of the track and decides it’s time to campaign for the nationalization of the railroads. He is due in San Francisco the next day for a rally, and his train is now six hours late. Everything comes to a screeching halt as a split rail causes a derailment; the engine is flat on its side. Chalmers approaches hysteria as he encounters a train crew that is doing its job but not fast enough to get him to San Francisco on time.
At the Winston station, the station superintendent, who had been a drifter only a few days before, gets word of the problem and passes the buck to the night supervisor at Silver Springs, who passes the buck to his boss. Division manager Dave Mitchum is the brother-in-law of Claude Slagenhop and owes his job to a bit of blackmail between Jim Taggart and Wesley Mouch involving Mouch’s sister. Clifton Locey had moved Mitchum into his present position at Silver Springs when the former division head quit over the issue of Chick Morrison’s train getting the reserve locomotive. Mitchum is an old railroad hand who blames a conspiracy of the Big Boys for his many career failures, and once again he is at a loss as to what actions to take in this emergency.
Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher, says they aren’t going to send a coal burning steam locomotive into a tunnel built for diesels. They don’t dare delay the Army munitions train to use its diesel to haul the Comet. Nobody wants to take responsibility and make a decision with Locey and the Unification Board watching. Brent says they need to take the diesel from an eastbound freight, which is on its way, after it exits the tunnel, and use that diesel to move the Comet through the tunnel. Then they can use a coal burner to get the Comet to the West Coast; it will be eighteen hours late. Everyone knows that blame is going to be delegated from New York; Brent asks rhetorically, “Who is John Galt?”
When the Comet reaches Winston, hauled by a switching engine, and Chalmers gets the bad news, he goes ballistic. The conductor takes Chalmers to the station, where the bureaucrat orders the station supervisor and call boy to get his train through the tunnel – or else. They explain that Mitchum has told them to hold the train until morning, and Chalmers orders them to send a telegram to Jim Taggart himself. In New York, Jim passes the buck to Clifton Locey, who orders Mitchum to send the Comet through the tunnel “safely” with whatever motive power is available. Mitchum knows he is being framed for the Unification Board. He contacts Omaha to find that the regional boss has disappeared. The Iowa-Minnesota regional boss doesn’t want to hear about it, lest he become involved in the rapidly expanding debacle, and the chief engineer of the Central Region tells him to follow orders. Mitchum types up the train orders, and every employee down the line who executes them knows that the orders are wrong, but if the Unification Board rules against them, they and their families will starve to death.
Mitchum tells Brent he is taking a track motor up the line to Fairmount, where he thinks there may be a diesel engine available. It is clear to Brent that Mitchum is trying to make himself scarce. Mitchum tells Brent to wait thirty minutes and then send the Comet through the tunnel with a coal burning steam locomotive. Brent refuses, demanding a written order, which Mitchum won’t provide. Brent realizes Mitchum is framing him for the Unification Board, so he quits. Mitchum screams that he will bring the law down on him. Brent demands that Mitchum repeat his train order in front of witnesses, and Mitchum assaults him. Brent leaves, and Mitchum gives his orders to the call boy, who executes them after major misgivings.
At Winston, the engineer of the coal burner refuses to drive the train and vanishes into the night. The station agent hands the job to a drunk employee who is a friend of Fred Kinnan and who has already survived a bout with the Unification Board. As the train departs with Chalmers’ car in the consist, the conductor slips off the train and disappears. By amazing coincidence, the passengers in the first class section of the Comet include a professor of sociology who teaches collectivism, a journalist supporting the use of compulsion because his feelings dictate, a schoolteacher who has corrupted the minds of innocents, a newspaper publisher who believes in fascism, and a businessman who received his big break from the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. This is just a short sample of the long list of miscreants Rand lists as passengers on this Train of Fools. As the train enters the tunnel, the last living vision of its passengers is of Wyatt’s Torch.
Railroad Technology
Taggart Transcontinental’s tunnel is based on the real life Moffat Tunnel, opened in 1926, and built by the Denver and Rio Grande. Thanks to multiple mergers, it is owned today by the Union Pacific.
A track motor is a powered handcar, now replaced by the ubiquitous high railer, which is a truck or SUV fitted with railroad wheels. Today, even large trucks, such as vacuum trucks that clean rights-of-way and culverts, carry high railer technology, and railroads designate them as trains on their dispatching systems.
Telegraphers, local dispatchers and call boys disappeared with the addition of radio to the railroads’ arsenal in the Fifties. Today, data telemetry and the Internet permit railroads to have up-to-the-minute information, which is why railroads utilize single location dispatching.
Discussion Topics
But if you fixture it into a mill configuration, it isn’t a lathe anymore. The thing you describe sounds like the world’s largest Shopmaster more than it does a lathe.
True, but I’d hate to have to do something as long as lathe ways in that kind of setup.
You are right, thunkit. Didn’t think of that. Which is why I went to the Inventory Control Dept. as soon as possible. :)
Let me put it a little differently. I personally would have a greater confidence of succeeding in making a lathe on a mill than I would in making a mill on a lathe. Maybe it’s more of an issue with me personally.
I had the same reaction to the Lathe comment as you. I worked with lathes and milling machines working my way through college in the 70s in a machine shop.
The lathe can create parts, but it can’t create the electric motor that runs it.
And a foot powered lathe is not going to create high finish machine tools.
Apart from that, the lathe was the most satisfying machine to operate based on what you could create.
I was taught by a navy machinist that the idea was to keep the number of machine tools on a ship to a minimum. They could rebuild most battle damaged parts with basic equipment. Damn good machinists in the navy.
If you want me to respond make an objective point.
ML/NJ
A gratuitous insult is not objective.
Rearden would understand this discussion and probably add to it, that is what he does.He deals with rational processes.
OTOH, Jim Taggert wouldn't, he doesn't use concrete, rational thought as a way of solving a problem.
The clash of these two distinct thought processes is the basis of AS.
As a machinist, you couldn't consider emotion in the design and manufacture of a part.
Jim Taggert couldn't design and build a part because he would have to include irrational elements thus spoiling it's intended use.
Taggert could, however use others to build it for him.
To do so he needs to make them feel as if they are indebted to him in some manner.
That is what the looters and moochers do.
If you look at my previous posts, I'm sure that you'll see that I don't agree with Ragnars destructive actions, I'm with you on this. The destruction of wealth is not condoned by the producers because they understand that it is a regression that will have to once again be overcome if they can continue living as they do.
How can we deal with irrationality in a world that we view as rational? Something has to give.
Correct. It's back to basics.
...it seems the whole structure of financial wealth ie:401k's,etc. is what is being wiped out because it is based on debt as money.
Correct again. Likewise, our whole fiat currency system is based on debt, which has exploded out of control.
...even if GM goes bankrupt the Machine Tools and Dies and Blue Prints remain.
Correct. And what medium of exchange do we use to restart the business, pay the employees and sell the cars? The current fiat money supply is based on unsustainable debt. How do we start again? (You can see what I'm leading to.)
Read Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
I think Ragnar's actions square with Galt's principle that force may (must) be resorted to when force has been used against one, in this case, through unjust tax law backed by the government's guns. As you say, his fellow strikers disagree with his methods, but primarily because they pose an unwarranted danger to him personally. But, of course, he is free to pursue his understanding of the correct action.
Kirk
I was on a Yahoo group once that had to do with Peak Oil, and the expectation (hope on many people’s part...) that running out of oil would bring the world back to the medieval and a huge percentage of the world’s population would die as a result of lack of medicines and other essentials.
I was thinking at the time what I would do if anything approaching a pandemic like this were to happen, and the “things” didn’t matter so much as the know-how. And to what I think is one of Rand’s points, if people know how to build things (steel, rail, tools, etc.), then it WILL come back once the impediments are removed. I actually found myself wanting to stock up more on old-time How-To books to be able to maintain my own tools, buildings, equipment, and also how people constructed their basic tools back a couple of hundred years ago. I’m a bit concerned about the fact that SO MUCH of our industrial plant has moved to China and wonder if we could restart at this point. I think so, but am not fully confident of that fact.
Another generation gone and we might not. For instance, I can keep my old Mercedes diesel going forever if I have the basic parts available, and they would be for some time to come. Most of my children’s generation couldn’t. We are really losing the knowledge of doing for ourselves, one generation at a time.
Of course, necessity sometimes is truly the mother of invention, and my son’s generation may have to learn how to restart, and those who can will percolate to the top. The others will either go away or be poor.
“Civilization is always only one generation away from barbarism.” - Roland Bainton
I interpreted Ragnar’s car having a “million dollar engine” to mean that, like everything else, the Strikers work at perfection. Ragnar or someone else would keep the engine of the car in tip-top shape because that is what they do. Not that it was the mystery engine. The creator would never have let a working model out amongst the Looters. Too much risk. Also, Rand is setting up a metaphor here. The “engine of the world” powering a rust-bucket jalopy.
I have a theory that I've used often in raising my boys and running my little production shop. I call it the "Coin of the Realm" theory. When my boys would complain that they had a bad teacher, they weren't learning anything or they were bored I would ask them, "You're in school, what's the coin of the realm"? And they would answer "grades". Correct. Their mother wouldn't agree with me. She would say "learning". And I would say in a perfect world that would be true. But grades are what determines going to the next level. Getting into college. It would be nice if along with good grades you would get some education into their thick heads. But in the end you are judged in school by your grades. Stop bitching and accept the reality of the situation. You are in a school. Get the grades up. The Coin of the Realm.
In my shop the Coin of the Realm is quality production. I tell new guys that they don't have to kiss my ass or suck up to me or anyone else. I don't even have to like them. And I point out one of my best employees that has a nasty personality that nobody cares much for but he gets the job done better than anyone. That's all the counts. Just produce good parts as fast as possible and you will make your money and get along just fine. In my shop production is everything. The Coin of the Realm.
Which brings me to money and Francisco d'Anconia. He correctly identified that money, properly understood and representative of value ( honest work. Production of life sustaining goods and services) is a moral good. Just like grades, properly understood and representative of value ( honest study, knowledge )is a moral good.
The proper Coin of the Realm in an economy is honest money. Earned by honest, productive, quality labor.
But if the grades are given out by favor or influence they cease to be a moral good. If money has been created out of thin air by a privileged elite and given out to other privileged elite bankers, The Coin of the Realm has been subverted. That's where we find ourselves. The Coin of the Realm in our economy isn't production and honest labor but Pull and Who You Know. Just look at the days newspapers to see who is getting subsidies and fiat money. Atlas Shrugged has come home to roost
And as many of us have pointed out, this system is drowning in it's own poison. What will and should replace it ? Gold coins? Paper currency backed by precious metals? I don't think that solves the problem. Because even if we back the currency with some solid commodity yet allow the creation and control of the Coin of the Realm to stay in the hands of the politicians ( Legal Tender Laws come to mind) and bankers we will never return money to the moral good it should be as described by d'Anconia.
IMO the only true "money" - I shall, as Rand would say, define my terms- ie:a store of value and a medium of exchanges.....will come into the market naturally after the production of wealth begins again. Maybe through script that represents gold coins or bullets or water. In the end honest bankers will emerge to hold the "savings" of the producers and issue receipts that can be traded. They would be true stores of value and reliable mediums of exchange
And presto! in short order The Coin of the Realm will be real money representing honest labor and real goods and services.
On the Day After, when nobody will take fiat greenbacks anymore, there will still be farmers and miners and makers of things that people need, who will be producing wealth and trading tit for tat. That is how I believe the workers will be paid and supplies purchsed. And little by little, The Coin of the Realm will emerge. Freely given and freely taken.
"The only domestic beneficiaries from the existence of anonymity-providing currency are the criminal fraternity: those engaged in tax evasion and money laundering, and those wishing to store the proceeds from crime and the means to commit further crimes. Large denomination bank notes are an especially scandalous subsidy to criminal activity and to the grey and black economies. There is no economic justification for $50 and $100 bank notes, let alone for the €200 and €500 bank notes issued by the ECB".
There it is in a nut shell boys and girls! If we leave the Establishment, Valuation, and Control of "money" to ANYTHING except the Free Market we are doomed to the chains of tyranny these folks have already forged for us.
Talk about A Moratorium on Brains. If we do that it will be a Crematorium of Brains!
Thanks for your observations. Very thought provoking!
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