I’m in til Newt’s out .. then I’m out til Galt’s in !
John Galt signed on as a junior engineer with the Twentieth Century Motor Company in Starnesville, Wisconsin. There he conceived the idea that he could extract static electricity from the atmosphere and use it as an almost limitless source of energy. In 2007 he actually completed a prototypical electrostatic motor and prepared to demonstrate it to his employer, Gerald "Jed" Starnes. His boss, William Hastings, would later provide the temporal clue to Dagny Taggart that Galt was twenty-six years old when he built his prototype.
Then disaster struck. Gerald Starnes died, and his three children—two brothers, Gerald Jr. and Eric, and their sister Ivy—proposed a radical change in management for the factory. Under this system, people would work according to their ability, but be paid according to their needs.
The employees actually voted in favor of this plan, with no conception of what it would mean. This vote took place in the main assembly bay of the factory. After this vote, Gerald Starnes, Jr. stood up to announce the results. According to the skilled lathe-operator and shop foreman who witnessed it, Mr. Starnes said the following: "This is a great moment in the history of our country! Remember that none of you may leave this place, for you are all bound here by the moral code which we all accept!"
"I don't," said John Galt, who quietly stood up in his place. Every eye sank when it beheld him, because "he stood like a man who knows that he is right."
Galt went on, "I will put an end to this once and for all." Then he turned to walk out of the bay.
Gerald Starnes called after him, "How?"
Galt turned and said, "I will stop the motor of the world."
To understand what John Galt meant by that provocative statement, one needs to understand what is the motor of the world. Ayn Rand's point was that man's mind is the motor of the world—and if you punish a man for using his mind, then sooner or later the mind will refuse to move the world. Thus John Galt proposed not only to quit the factory (which he did, after deliberately wrecking his prototype and removing most of his notes, leaving only enough notes to remind people of what might have been) but also to quit a system that, even beyond one factory with three misguided heirs running it, rewarded failure and punished success.
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