Posted on 05/30/2009 7:31:15 AM PDT by Publius
Synopsis
The Comet rolls across Nebraska with Dagny’s private car in the consist. Dagny hears the shout of the conductor throwing a hobo off the vestibule of her car, but she rescues the hobo and asks him to be her dinner guest. He vaguely remembers her as “the lady who ran a railroad”, and he has been roaming the country for the past six months looking for work. Jobs are being hoarded for the friends of Unification Board members, and he is heading west to avoid them. Farmers aren’t happy to feed hobos, what with tax collectors and gangs of raiders – deserters from their jobs – on the prowl. As dinner arrives, the hobo tells of his last job at Hammond in Colorado – but mentions that he is a survivor of the disaster at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, and boy, does he have a story to tell! It was he who invented the telltale question, “Who is John Galt?” And so begins a tale...
The Starnes heirs had made speeches in favor of The Plan, and although few understood it, most felt obligated to vote for it. Hadn’t every newspaper and movie and public speech spoken in favor of such sentiments? The hobo compares it to pouring water into a tank while a pipe drains it out faster than you can fill it; then the more you fill it, the wider the drainpipe grows until you are working without rest or hope. It’s a vision of hell.
Twice a year, the workers voted on whose need was foremost – after all, weren’t they all one big family? Soon everyone became a beggar, valuing his miseries above those of his fellow workers. As production fell, the workers voted on who were the best workers and made them work even harder. People weren’t paid by time, but by need. People watched each other like hawks, hiding their abilities and making sure no one worked better or faster than themselves. One man came up with a process that saved thousands of man-hours, got himself labeled as “exceptionally able” and found himself sentenced to double shifts. They had been told that the world of capitalism was vicious, but it was nothing like this, where people competed to do the worst job possible. People turned to drink, and the only thing they made was babies because that increased their allowance. People brought in every sort of shiftless relative to increase their need. The Plan had been put in place to facilitate love and brotherhood, and now people hated each other, spying and informing at will. Sick family members became a bane, one of whom may have been murdered because she was a drain on the collective.
Eric Starnes became the Director of Public Relations and spent his time fraternizing with the workers to show that he was one of them. Gerald Starnes was Director of Production and spent entire fortunes on parties. Ivy Starnes was Director of Distribution and evaluated the needs of her workers, paying them as she saw fit on a scale of bootlicking.
The best men left and the company fell apart. Gerald went to customers demanding they buy from Twentieth Century, not because the motors were good, but because the workers needed the orders. After four years, the experiment ended and the company collapsed.
Back at that first meeting when The Plan was announced, a young engineer quit, refusing to accept Gerald Starnes’ moral order and announcing that he would put an end to it once and for all by stopping the motor of the world. His name was John Galt.
Dagny awakens to find the Comet stopped somewhere on the tracks of the Kansas Western, and no member of the crew is on the train. But Owen Kellogg is! They are on a frozen train, abandoned by the railroad’s employees. Dagny is actually elated that her employees have rejected serfdom, but is dejected when she sees that it was old reliable Pat Logan who was driving the coal burning steam locomotive. Dagny informs the passengers of what has happened, and she and Kellogg walk down the line to find a working phone box. The hobo, Jeff Allen, is hired on the spot as the new conductor to keep order on the train.
As they walk, Dagny offers Kellogg a job on the railroad, but he refuses; the only job he would want with the railroad is menial work. He is helping Dagny because he needs to get somewhere for a month’s vacation with friends. They reach the first phone to find it’s broken; they must march another five miles to the next one. Kellogg offers her a cigarette; it bears the sign of the dollar. He won’t tell Dagny where the cigarettes come from, but tells her the dollar sign is the current symbol of depravity. Dagny wants to buy the pack, and Kellogg agrees to sell it to her for five cents – in gold.
Dagny and Kellogg finally reach a phone box that works, but find themselves in a struggle over the phone with the night dispatcher of the Kansas Western who is afraid to do anything until Dagny takes responsibility for his actions.
A short distance from the tracks is a bright beacon that marks an airstrip on which sits a Dwight Sanders plane. The airport attendant is no smarter than the night dispatcher, so Dagny writes him a check for fifteen thousand dollars and darkly hints at a secret mission from important men in Washington. That gets her the plane. Dagny takes off for Utah in the darkness.
As the sun comes up, she lands near Afton, the home of Utah Tech, and looks for a rental car. But she quickly discovers that Quentin Daniels is just now taking off with a stranger who came for him a few hours earlier. Dagny realizes it’s The Destroyer! She jumps in her plane, takes off and follows them over Colorado. Just when she thinks the plane with Daniels should climb, it banks and prepares to land, but where? The landscape appears to be jagged peaks. Then the plane disappears entirely. Dagny drops and circles, trying to find the plane, but discovers that the view of the valley floor hasn’t changed at all, and the light doesn’t seem right. It’s an image – a hologram! As Dagny penetrates it, a bright flash of light hits her, and the plane’s engine dies. Dagny goes in for a dead stick landing. As she hurtles toward the ground, she says, “Oh hell! Who is John Galt?”
Discussion Topics
If you know the job you are taking is dangerous, then, why is the company responsible? Did the company force you to take that job? Did they put you in chains and drag you unwillingly into serfdom?
If you have two competing companies offering identical wages, yet, one has a much better track record when it comes to safety, they’ll have no problems getting employees.
The less safe company will, more than likely, get the marginal employees and eventually go out of business.
Unions, as they’re currently constructed, would never have come about if big business wouldn’t have been in bed with government.
Government is supposed to play the neutral judge when it comes to companies and employees.
Instead, turn of the century companies had the implied backing of government.
Ah, good point. I had forgotten about that distorting factor.
Well, as I say, “Never underestimate the power of government to distort markets.”
I tend to sympathize with business when it comes to Unions..to a point.
However, business did it to themselves when they hired thugs to break strikes while government turned a blind eye. Evidently, “freedom of association” was not a right granted to the ordinary man during that period of time.
That is close to the legislation Ted Kennedy introduced yesterday. Did you see that? Universal disability coverage. Only $65 a month, to be taken from your pay. It will raise $350 billion a year. If you can’t eat, shower, or use the potty you can claim it. Somehow, I think he’s eligible.
I haven’t posted to this thread in a while, but it’s pretty damned depressing how accurately real life is paralleling Rand’s fictional novel. She doesn’t seem to have left anything out. Prophetic is putting it mildly.
If he has a sense of humor and you’ve made the point that unions trade freedom for safety, you might even say that since we all know the dial has been twisted FAR too far toward safety, abolishing unions might help restore the balance!
The greatest, in fact practically only, growth in union membership today is among government workers, where no such safety concerns have ever existed. It is only because unionists see that there is no limit to their demands, since their employers have effectively unlimited resources to meet them, and no alternative source of labor to turn to that this is so. In the private sector, unionism is practically dead. Even in the “worst economy since the Great Depression... or maybe since Jimmy Carter), public employee union membership is 5 times the rate of that in the private sector.
This is the unionism which poses the greatest threat.
Kirk
...One man came up with a process that saved thousands of man-hours, got himself labeled as “exceptionally able” and found himself sentenced to double shifts...
This type of treatment currently occurs regularly in both union and non-union jobs. A 'double shift' is one form of this tactic but not the only one. An exceptionally talented/skilled individual will be given the most difficult task in any group endeavor. The praise is heaped on them and they will get 'attaboys from all around but in the end, they are no better off than the onlookers warming up their hands for the ol' pat on the back. I really hadn't questioned why this occurs until reading Atlas Shrugged. I am of the opinion that the capitalist system would be just as likely to embrace manipulation as does communism. The capitalist, being interested in profits, would understand that peer pressure is one of the great motivators of an individual in a group setting. The same thing is happening at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, with the resulting profit going ostensibly to the group instead of the capital investor. Group think, being what it is, is a powerful tool that can be used against the individual. The reason for the manipulation is what defines the hobos story.
I can recall many meetings in my past where praise for being a 'team player' was doled out profusely. The phrase gets to be about as welcome as fingernails on a chalkboard when you realize what is truly being said. I had always considered myself a free agent and brought my skills to the workplace with the intention of fair trade, but I can honestly say that it never occurred (under the current system of regulated capitalism) until I went to work for myself as an independent contractor.
So, if you recognize this as your own experience, take my advice - the next time you are praised for your wonderful work ethic and being a team player, don't walk, RUN to the nearest exit and don't look back. If you can recognize the value in yourself you will never regret leaving.
There. Fixed it.
The experience I had in 30+ years of computer programming for large banks and insurance companies was exactly what you stated. Risk and effort were not rewarded due to bureaucratized procedures that made reward impossible. Moochers or innocent bystanders would get credit for what you did. When an unqualified lady got a promotion that should have gone to me, I quit on the spot and retired. I have never regretted that decision.
Thanks for the addition Publius. I had tried using ‘regulated’ in that same position but felt that it was too vague so I took it out. You are spot on.
The fattest slob among us (probably me) can sprint pretty fast...over a short distance...
...and I’m willing to do so, if I know the distance ahead of time.
Your experience closely mirrors my own. See my post 13.
Yes, I relate to that entirely. One of my co-workers stated during the current budget crises here in Cali that people shouldn’t complain about tax raises, as the upper level people can afford. One community was voting on a local sales tax hike to pay for budget gaps. All of the local businesses were against it, as people will naturally go elsewhere. His view was “if you can afford a big ticket item, you can afford the tax.” Ok, thats all well and good. But when same individual worked a pile of overtime, and only saw a small increase in pay, well that was a different thing altogether. Now I like this person, think a lot of him, but it show the disconnect that some people have.
AND it's based on taxes that MAGNIFY rather than DAMPEN the fluctuations in the economy as a whole, income taxes with "progressive" rates. Economy ticks up 10% and tax revenues go up 20%, say. They gladly institute new programs, creating new constituencies inside and outside government with money that's not their own, and which a nine year old would know is transitory in nature. Then when the inevitable downturn comes, it's magnified into a larger fluctuation by their poor choice of a tax system, and they act like it's the TAXPAYERS responsibility to fix the problem they created and which was easily foreseen. If you object they say you're racist, selfish, homophobic or whatever else comes to mind.
But what I wanted to say was the library clerk asked me if Oprah had put AS on her book club list. The book has been extremely popular lately. I explained that the book is political, and seems to speak to people about what is currently going on. He said that he had read the book in high school (he was perhaps 20 or so) and knew it was political.
Even having read the book, he seemed truly puzzled about the reason for it's sudden popularity.
That's a shame.
I thought I remembered quite a lot of the story. But I got to the parts involving d'Anconia and either I've forgotten his portion of the plot (which would seem silly), or maybe I never quite picked up on his big picture goal.
I suspect that I noticed his "bad" deeds and simply dismissed him as a jerk. It will be interesting, as I continue reading, to see how much of the story I didn't pick up on before. If it's obvious, I'll feel like an idiot.
But this just goes to show how experience and perspective can affect ones view overtime, and I think when you can experience this with a book, it's a mark of good literature.
When you’re re-reading it, check in with the prior book club threads, enumerated above in Post #2. You can watch things evolve. Try your hand at some of the discussion topics.
Oprah. Wow. I would have either been utterly speechless or on the floor laughing.
((Ducking!))
Chapter 20 now, “The Sign Of The Dollar,” a chapter that couldn’t contrast more strongly with the overstrained psychological drama and improbable dialogue of the previous one. It is Rand back in her stride chronicling the slow dissolution of a once-great land. Reading the two of them close together makes me wonder if perhaps they weren’t actually written together – this one a polished gem, the previous a clump of ore that could have stood a few of the rough edges to be chiseled off.
I suppose I should confess at this point that this chapter is one of my very favorites in the book. In it Rand has, finally, resumed her dramatic stride and the thing begins to crackle once the focus is out of the bedroom and into the world. Things are clicking, pieces coming together. And to Rand’s great credit as an author her protagonist is not omniscient, but just enough behind the reader to make her credible. That is actually a very difficult thing to pull off.
Dagny has boarded a train that is running through a middle America as imagined by Hieronymus Bosch, islands of normality punctuated by the inimitable signs of decay.
…she saw the ghosts between, the remnants of towns, the skeletons of factories with crumbling smokestacks, the corpses of shops with broken panes, the slanting poles with shreds of wire…she saw an ice-cream cone made of radiant tubing, hanging above the corner of a street, and a battered car being parked below, with a young boy at the wheel and a girl stepping out, her white dress blowing in the summer wind – she shuddered for the two of them, thinking: I can’t look at you, I who know what it has taken to give you your youth, to give you this evening, this car, and the ice-cream cone you’re going to buy for a quarter…
I saw something else in my mind reading that, the face at the curtain of the train window not Dagny’s, but of a horribly scarred World War II veteran, disfigured for life in the explosion that destroyed his tank in the hedgerows of Normandy. Rand might have known such a man. He would have known them. There was no WWII in Rand’s alternate history but Atlas Shrugged is pervaded with a sense of ingratitude toward the sacrifice that has brought a plenty taken for granted, and a sense of the fragility of that plenty in the face of that ingratitude. In that it is profoundly a post-war novel.
Enter the hobo. I use the word advisedly – a hobo is not a bum, nor is he a “tramp” as Rand incorrectly terms him, he is a traveling man who supports himself with odd jobs, and Rand has already placed words of import into the mouths of vagrants. This one has a mouthful himself, twelve pages of a single story that we already know. One might think that would qualify it for the cutting-room floor. Hardly; in my opinion it’s twelve of the best pages in the book.
Dagny gives him a ride and she buys him his dinner, and in reward he tells her a story, the story of the six thousand workers at the Twentieth Century Motor Company and how they degraded and wasted their patrimony. There is no work for him in the East anymore, everyone is watched, no one is allowed to succeed unless it be through connections with the Unification Board. And everywhere he does manage to find a few weeks’ work, closes.
“Anything you tried, anything you touched – it fell. Anywhere you looked, work was stopping – the factories were stopping – the machines were stopping – “ he added slowly, in a whisper, as if seeing some secret terror of his own, “the… motors… were… stopping.”
And the odd catchphrase of despair and futility “Who is John Galt?” that has danced through the novel?
“That’s it, ma’am. That’s what I’m afraid of. It might have been me who started it.”
Well, there are enough versions of this fable around already – a woman at a cocktail party’s, Francisco’s (at least two of them, Prometheus and Atlantis), Hugh Akston’s…and now this, in the mouth of a vagrant, hardly a place to inspire confidence, and yet it’s the one true story. It is the story of a great enterprise’s slide into pride, sin, and failure. In twelve pages we have a precise description of a Randian Fall From Grace. No external entity may be blamed, no force of tyranny imposed from afar. The company’s employees chose their fate, and it is not accidental that the hobo chooses to cast it in quasi-religious terms.
“You know, ma’am, we are marked men, in a way, those of us who lived through the four years of that plan… What is that hell is supposed to be? Evil – plain, naked, smirking evil, isn’t it? Well, that’s what we saw and helped to make – and I think we’re damned, every one of us, and maybe we’ll never be forgiven.”
“They let us vote on it, too, and everybody – almost everybody – voted for it. We didn’t know. We thought it was good. No, that’s not true, either. We thought that we were supposed to think it was good.”
A nice turn of phrase, that. I know personally a tragic number of American citizens who disposed of their vote in the past Presidential election based on that feckless premise.
“The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need.”
Marx’s shade is walking through Starnesville.
“The meeting was held on a spring night, twelve years ago…We had just voted for the new plan and we were in an edgy sort of mood, making too much noise, cheering the people’s victory, threatening some kind of unknown enemies and spoiling for a fight, like bullies with an uneasy conscience…Gerald Starnes yelled through the noise. ‘Remember that none of us may now leave this place, for each of us belongs to all the others by the moral law which we all accept!’ ‘I don’t,’ said one man and stood up…. ‘I will put an end to this once and for all,’ he said. ‘I will stop the motor of the world.’ Then he walked out…”
“…When I hear them repeating that question, I feel afraid. I think of the man who said that he would stop the motor of the world. You see, his name was John Galt.”
Well, well. Twelve years. It is a length of time that has been noted frequently throughout the novel with respect to a number of seemingly unconnected events. Twelve years. Dagny gives her sleeper to the hobo and sits alone, knowing that what she has just heard is the truth. The train is now shunted off course along a recently-acquired line and she frets about the lost time.
I’ll get there in time, she thought. I’ll get there first. I’ll save the motor. There’s one motor he’s not going to stop, she thought…
Oh, no? Dagny has all the information the reader has but she hasn’t made the connection yet. It is not her motor after all. It is literally John Galt’s.
Dagny wakes up. The train is “frozen,” meaning it has been abandoned by its working crew in the middle of nowhere with a full complement of passengers onboard. It is all very proper, the fires of the ancient steam locomotive banked, the brakes set, a warning lantern placed at the rear of the train to warn the next one along. That might, in these times of decadence, be days. And in the logbook of the locomotive Dagny finds a familiar name: Pat Logan, her engineer when she risked her life at a breakneck speed to prove the worth of Reardon Metal, logging out of his last Taggart ride.
She’ll walk for help, then – she has to get to Utah. But there are outlaws, raiders, “deserters” in these days when the only legitimate employment is for the looters, and the road is no longer safe. Who turns up but her old employee, the mystery man Owen Kellogg! He does seem to turn up at the oddest moments, doesn’t he? But this one is legitimate, and Kellogg a perfectly legitimate passenger. He’s off for a month’s vacation at an undisclosed location and it’s the most important thing in his world. A month’s vacation. Now, isn’t that interesting?
He’s the only one willing to accompany Dagny…except for one other. Yes, it’s the hobo, whose name is Jeff Allen. She hires him on the spot to take charge of the abandoned train and its passengers until help arrives. Good help is so hard to find these days.
So what, exactly, is Kellogg doing these days?
“Oh, many things.”
“Where are you working now?” “On special assignments, more or less.”
“Of what kind?”
“Of every kind.”
“You’re not working for a railroad?”
“No.”
That isn’t going to work. Kellogg isn’t talking, but Dagny is thinking. And she wants him back, desperately because good help…
“What I need is your – “
“-mind, Miss Taggart? My mind is not on the market any longer.”
She stood looking at him, her face growing harder. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she said at last.
Yes, he is. And he’s laughing at her. Infuriating male. They walk, and they find a working phone, and she summons help for the gaggle of fools left on the abandoned train. That was her charge. Next is her mission. But along the way Kellogg absentmindedly offers her a cigarette.
She was about to take a cigarette – then, suddenly, she seized his wrist and tore the package out of his hand. It was a plain white package that bore, as a single imprint, the sign of the dollar… She caught a glimpse of his face: he looked a little astonished and very amused.
“Where did you get this?” she asked.
He was smiling. “If you know enough to ask that, Miss Taggart, you should know that I won’t answer.”
“I know that this stands for something.”
“The dollar sign? For a great deal. It stands on the vest of every fat, piglike figure in every cartoon, for the purpose of denoting a crook, a grafter, a scoundrel – as the one sure-fire brand of evil. It stands – as the money of a free country – for achievement, for success, for ability, for man’s creative power – and precisely for these reasons, it is used as a brand of infamy…Incidentally, do you know where that sign comes from? It stands for the initials of the United States.”
Yes, actually, it does. Those who take that sort of thing for granted and place their beliefs in something their political enthusiasms tell them is a “higher truth,” do so at the risk of the sort of ingratitude that will bring the entire system crashing to the ground. That is Rand’s warning. That is the point of Atlas Shrugged.
“…Do you know that the United States is the only country in history that has ever used its monogram as a symbol of depravity? Ask yourself why. Ask yourself how long a country that did that could hope to exist, and whose moral standards have destroyed it.”
Well, the country didn’t. Certain of its self-appointed intellectual leaders have, just as they have in the novel, under the fatuous assumption that it is the currency that is being venerated and not the ability to earn it. It is, properly, a measure of merit, not merit itself. A lot of people possessing large quantities of it tend to forget that fact just as easily as an editorial cartoonist.
Dagny purchases an airplane at an airfield in the middle of nowhere, a Dwight Sanders airplane that has unaccountably been abandoned. Kellogg has remained, cheerfully taking responsibility for putting proper closure to the train full of demanding customers. And so Dagny continues her mission. Here Rand’s descriptions are obviously by an individual who has sampled the exquisite moments of general aviation but not, I suspect, as a pilot. They are evocative nevertheless. And Dagny finds herself using one checkpoint that is the brave flickering of Wyatt’s Torch.
She arrives at Afton, Utah, minutes too late.
“There’s Mr. Daniels going now.”
“WHAT?”
“He went with the man who flew in for him two-three hours ago. Never saw him before, but boy! – he’s got a beauty of a ship!”
It is impossible. They know. How could they know? No one outside her select circle knew about Daniels, and absolutely no one knew about his letter…except for Eddie Willers. And a certain anonymous track-worker.
She gives chase, of course. The mountains of Colorado (or anywhere else that size) can be very dangerous flying country as this author can personally attest. Off-course, low on fuel, this is the stuff of disaster. Downdrafts can easily exceed the climb capabilities of a light aircraft, and when that happens, you go down, and where the ground is as much vertical as horizontal, that can be a very unhappy circumstance. The valley that she happens upon is the only thing that kept her alive.
It is a secret valley, a Shangri-La in the Colorado high country, and she’s about to land there, because a sudden flash of light has disabled her engine and one thing you really don’t want to see is the prop that’s supposed to be pulling you along, stationary, grinning at you. The student pilot encountering these circumstances must first resist the temptation to shoot his instructor, although no true jury of his peers would ever convict.
Dagny fights it to the ground, because that’s what you do. You trade airspeed for altitude, altitude for distance, and along the way you’re hoping for that nice, green, smooth spot that Dagny spies. Before she strikes she knows she’s got it, and the last thing to go through her head is a derisive, “Oh, hell! Who is John Galt?”
There is a truism that one shouldn’t ask questions whose answers one isn’t ready to know.
Have a great week, Publius!
I certainly am in agreement with you.
A fatalistic attitude permeates the workers in our country. It's the frog in the pot syndrome, the water being hot enough to be uncomfortable but not yet cooking the frog. Partly to blame is the specialization of skills needed for employment today. The hidden cost is evident in the inability to change and adapt to current circumstances. This leads to despair and at times rage. We have all heard about such events in the news.
The knowledge that one could change their own circumstances is foreign to many who are quick to complain about their lot in life. Who's fault is that? Education has always been a path to improving ones position but I fear, that due to the necessary specialization needed in today's world, an important lesson has been left out. That lesson being how to jump out of the pot. Perhaps the extra effort put forth into furthering ones career should be dropped in favor of gaining skills needed for starting ones own business or perhaps changing ones vocation.
I think, Still Thinking, that we both would rather work with a person who is aware of their own worth and empowered to change their circumstances.
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