Non-Contradiction: The Theme

It is the twilight of September 2^nd and Eddie Willers (age 32, p 3) is walking through the streets of New York en route to his office (p 4). The buildings are in a state of neglect and decay; it seems even the atmosphere is as well. A bum nestled amidst the shadows asks abruptly Who is John Galt?, a meaningless and evasive statement which troubles Eddie (p 3). Upon reaching Fifth Avenue, Eddie is comforted by the sight of goods “made by men, to be used by men.”

Eddie has a flashback to when he was seven years old (p 5). He had often visited the Taggart estate on the Hudson and admired an aged oak tree — “he thought it would always stand there.” The tree was later obliterated by lightning and “the trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago. . . . the living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.” Upon finding the corpse of the tree, Eddie felt his first sense of shock and betrayal and “never spoke about it to anyone.”

Eddie has a flashback to his tenth year (p 5) to a time with his “precious companion” in “a clearing of the woods” (p 6) (later revealed to be Dagny Taggart). The two children discuss what they will do in adulthood. Eddie wishes to do “whatever is right” while Dagny yearns for “business and earning a living.” Eddie adds that he anticipates “winning battles, or saving people out of fires, or climbing mountains” due to his minister’s prod to “always reach for the best within us.” Neither Eddie nor Dagny know what is their best within, causing Eddie to dream loosely and Dagny to look away, “up the railroad track.”

The statement Whatever is right remains a crux for Eddie as he walks into the office of James Taggart (p 6). James was the limp, pale and prematurely aged (p 7) President of Taggart Transcontinental (p 6). Eddie alerts James of the worsening state of the financially critical Rio Norte Line. Its shoddy old track remains un-replaced due to months of delays by Orren Boyle’s Associated Steel. Orren is James’ friend, and James warns Eddie, “There’s one thing you’re not going to mention next — and that’s Rearden Steel.” Eddie equates waiting any more on Associated Steel as just giving up on the Rio Norte Line (p 8) while its competitor the Phoenix-Durango continues to accumulate “freight traffic of” Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado” (p 9).

Eddie mentions the devastating loss to the Phoenix-Durango of Wyatt Oil’s freight (p 9). A biography of Ellis Wyatt ensues. Wyatt had inherited dying oil wells in a rocky patch of the Colorado mountains. Wyatt’s father had only “managed to squeeze an obscure living” but Wyatt gave “a shot of adrenalin to the heart of the mountain, the heart had started pumping, [and] the black blood had burst through the rocks.” Other oil companies faltered while Wyatt alone “discovered some way to revive exhausted oil wells” (p 10).

James’ abhorrence of the “grossly overrated” Wyatt provides “a sudden emotion” in his “lifeless voice.” James enters a tirade against Wyatt that transitions into a torrent of hate against the Phoenix-Durango. “[Wyatt would] come crawling to us, and he’d wait his turn along with all the other shippers, and he wouldn’t demand more than his fair share of transportation–if it weren’t for the Phoenix Durango. We can’t help it if we’re up against destructive competition of that kind. Nobody can blame us.” Frustrated by James’ evasiveness, Eddie leaves and is startled when he passes by Pop Harper trying to fix a typewriter until proclaiming, “You’re ready for the junk pile, old pal. Your days are numbered.”

Non-Contradiction: The Chain

Henry Rearden, a tall and gaunt 45 year old man with ash-blond hair and prominent cheekbones, stands in his Rearden Steel mill watching the first heat for the first order of Rearden Metal (p 28). He walks home late that night with a Rearden Metal chain bracelet in his pocket (p 29); its links “heavy, crudely made” and the shining metal was “greenish-blue” (p 36). Rearden is both happy and lonely: “he never felt loneliness except when he was happy” (p 29). Rearden recollects the ten years spent developing Rearden Metal and the additional hours “snatched almost guiltily, as for a secret love” (p 30). These hour “melted and fused within him” to form their own allow that both made him smile and made him “wonder why happiness could hurt.”

Rearden pauses — “he despised memories as a pointless indulgence” — but then allows himself to reflect on is life due to the personal magnitude of the evening (p 30). He reflects on his life from his first day of work at an iron mine, through his acquisition of multiple mines, to today, when the first heat for the first order of Rearden Metal was poured (p 30-31). He looks back to see the sign Rearden Steel, then thinks of Rearden Ore, Rearden Coal and Rearden Limestone before wishing “it were possible to light a sign over all of them, saying: Rearden Life” (p 32). Rearden next laments his wife, who he briefly doubts will understand how happy he is. “Happiness was the greatest agent of purification.” He thought people “were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been,” a respite from the “inexplicable and unnecessary” burden of suffering.

Upon entering his ugly house with the “cheerless look of a nudity not worth revealing,” Rearden encounters his wife Lillian, brother Philip, Mother and family friend Paul Larkin. His family makes sarcastic remarks about his tardiness and being too busy for them (p 32-33). What follows is a series of attacks on Rearden by his family, with his wife first to start; Rearden responds to each provocation differently in order to remain calm. Rearden greets Paul, who “was smiling in gratitude for the attention” and, curious why Paul is there, asks him if he is in trouble (p 33). Lillian interrupts, “Do you believe that nobody can want to see you just for your own sake, or do you believe that nobody can get along without your help?” Rearden wants to “utter an angry denial,” but Lillian’s smile leads him to assume she had merely made “a conservational joke” of the type “he had no capacity for”. “He stood looking at her, wondering about the things he had never been able to understand.”

Rearden’s brother is next to attack him (p 34). His mother’s true disposition is revealed after Rearden declines her offer to ring for his dinner (p 33). Without looking at Rearden — “only reciting words into space” — she says, “That’s the trouble I’ve always had with you. … It’s no use trying to do things for you, you don’t appreciate it.” Philip chimes in, “Henry, you work too hard … It’s not good for you.” Rearden laughs and responds, “I like it.” Philip continues nonplussed, “It’s a form of neurosis … when a man drowns himself in his work, it’s because he’s trying to escape from something. You ought to have a hobby.” Rearden irritatedly shouts For Christ’s sake! but Philip unabatedly proceeds, “You’ll become dull and narrow. Single-tracked, you know. … You don’t want to miss life … .” Rearden fights his anger by telling himself, “This is Philip’s form of solicitude … it would be unjust to feel resentment.” Rearden has now quelled his anger, and next shuts his resentment by thinking that his family is just “trying to show their concern for him–and he wished these were not the things they had chosen for concern.” Rearden smiled and made a futile response, “I had a pretty good time today, Phil” (p 34). Rearden desperately wishes somebody would ask what made his day good. “The sight of the running metal” fills his consciousness, making it “hard to concentrate.”

Rearden’s mother decides to make her own blow at him (p 34). His tardiness had caused him to miss a visit by one of his mother’s friends that evening. Mother remarks, “You might have apologized, only I ought to know better than to expect it.” She had the “injured look” of the “defenseless” and continued, “You never remember anything I say.” Rearden uses “the whole of the sense of his consideration” to evenly answer, “I’m sorry if I disappointed you, Mother.” Like his early response to Philip, this is useless and Mother continues, “You’re not sorry. … But when did you ever make an effort for anybody but yourself? … You think that if you pay the bills, that’s enough, don’t you? … All you give us money. Have you ever given us any time?” (p 34-35) Rearden remains stoic by rationalizing: “if this meant that she missed him … then it meant affection” and he was unjust to let his voice betray his disgust (p 35). “Half-spitting, half-begging,” Mother continues that Lillian needed Rearden today, “but I told her it was no use waiting” (p 35).

Now that each family member has had a chance to claw Rearden, Lillian attempts to entrap him (p 35). Speaking “too lightly and too purposefully at once, her smile overstressing an air of innocence and suggesting … a hidden trump card,” she uses an “apologetic” and “boastful” tone to mention that she wants an appointment with Rearden for a party of hers. She offers he choose the date — she suggests December 10^th — but clarifies that her event is unimportant because “it’s purely non-commercial.” Rearden states his indifference to the date, prompting Lillian to respond that the tenth is their wedding anniversary. Rearden recalls “his feeling for her was her only weapon” and that this must be “a proudly indirect attempt to test his feelings and to confess her own” (p 35-36). He knew that a party was “the best tribute she could offer” and felt that “he had to respect her intentions … even if he did not share he stardards” and even if he did not know whether he still wanted a tribute from her (p 36). “He had to let her win, he thought, because she had thrown herself upon his mercy.” Rearden acknowledges her victory and agrees to attend on December 10^th.

Rearden thinks to himself “words were a lens to focus one’s mind” and only Rearden Metal was on his mind (p 36). He states, “today at the mills we poured the first heat of Rearden Metal.” Silence ensues; Philip remarks that’s nice; the others remain quiet. Rearden drops the metal chain bracelet in Lillian’s lap as a “returning crusader offering his trophy to his love.” He states, “I brought you a present … it’s the first thing made from the first head of the first order of Rearden Metal.” She decries the bracelet’s monetary worthlessness and sarcastically remarks it will make her the “sensation of New York.” Philip tells Henry, “You’re conceited” Mother tells Henry, “Plain selfishness. … It’s got to be more precious than diamonds to everybody, just because it’s he that made it. … He’s been that way since he was five … I knew he’d grow up to be the most selfish creature on God’s earth” (p 36-37). Lillian remarks “it isn’t the gift, it’s the intention, I know … it’s sweet … it’s charming” and thanks Rearden while kissing his cheek (p 36-37).

Exhausted, Rearden sits by the fire and ponders his family’s behavior (p 37).

Rearden asks himself a question: “What did they seek from him?” (p 37)

Reardens answers his own question: his “response” is what they wanted (p 37).

Rearden asks himself another question — “did he like them?” — and quickly answers his own thoughts (p 38).

Rearden begins to nod off from boredom when Paul Larkin leans over to have “a private conversation” (p 38). After complimenting Rearden Metal — “a great product” — Larkin mentions, “I just hope you don’t run into trouble.” Rearden has to ask twice “What trouble?” before Larkin begins to describe Rearden’s “intractable” and “anti-social” reputation, as well as his “bad press” that is “not good” (p 38-39). Rearden dismisses all this with a definitive “I don’t give a damn what they think” and Larkin offers bromides (“one has to be so careful”; “I’m your friend, Hank”) before asking, “How is your man in Washington?” (p 39). Rearden responds that his lobbyist is, “Okay, I guess.” Larkin responds “with a kind of stressed insistence, as if discharging a painful moral duty, “Hank, it’s very important. … In fact, that’s what I cam here to tell you” (p 40). Rearden asks if there is “Any special reason?” and Larkin, deciding “that the duty was discharged” merely states, “No.” Rearden comments that lobbyists are “such a crummy lot” and Larkin looks away; Rearden continues his critique, causing Larking to shrug sadly and ask, “Who is John Galt?” Rearden sits up straight and responds, “No. There’s no reason to feel that way.”

Rearden gets up to pace the room and rationalizes his family life. “It was he who had to make himself learn to understand them, since he had so much to give, since they could never share his sense of joyous, boundless power.” Rearden decides to give his brother attention remarks to Philip, “You look done in.” Philip “sullenly” responds, “I’ve had a hard day.” Mother seizes the chance to berate Rearden, “You’re not the only one who works hard.” Rearden responds, “Why, that’s good. … Phil should fine some interest of his own” (p 41). Mother refuses to relent, “You like to see your brother sweating his health away? It amuses you, doesn’t it?” Rearden remarks that he would like to help. Mother continues, “You don’t have to help. You don’t have to feel anything for any of us.”

Rearden remains patient despite Mother, only to be faced by Philip’s discontent as well (p 41). After Rearden asks Philip “what were you doing today” and then reassures him “it does interest me,” Philip describes his frustration. “[Friends of Global Progress needs] ten thousand dollars for a vital program, but it’s a martyr’s task, tying to raise money. When I think of the kind of bloated money-bags I saw today … I couldn’t squeeze just a hundred bucks out of them, which was all I asked. they have no sense of moral duty, no–” Philip is interrupted by Rearden’s laughter, a reaction to the “childishly blatant” and “helplessly crude” combination of “the hint and the insult, offered together.” Rearden thinks to himself “the poor fool knows he’s at my mercy” and thus doesn’t need to bother “returning an insult.” Rearden wonders, “What sort of misery does he really live in, to get himself twisted quite so badly?”

Rearden attempts to give Philip happiness but is dispirited by the emotionless response (p 42). Offering Philip “the unexpected gratification of a hopeless desire,” Rearden states that a $10,000 check will be waiting for Philip the following day. Philip emotionlessly responds that “we’ll appreciate it very much.” Rearden feels within himself a “leaden, “gray” and “ugly” disappointment. Each family member makes a passive derogatory remark: Philip says “I didn’t expect it of you”; Lillian retorts “Henry’s poured his metal today” and asks if it ought be a national holiday; and Mother adds that Rearden is “a good man … but not often enough.” Philip asks whether Rearden whether he really cares about Friends of Global Progess’ mission, to which Rearden responds, “No … I only want you to be happy.” Philip states, “But that money is not for me. … I have no selfish interest in the matter whatsoever.” Rearden feels “a sudden loathing” because the words Philip meant his words.

Philip gives Rearden a last direct insult before Rearden walks away. Philip asks to have the $10,000 in cash because, “Friends of Global Progress are a very progressive group and they have always maintained that you represent the blackest element of social retrogression in the country, so it would embarrass us … .” Rearden wants to slap Philip, but instead agrees to pay cash (p 42-43). Larkin yells that Rearden should not have given the money, but Lillian disagrees, “What would happen to Henry’s vanity if he didn’t have us to throw alms to? What would become of his strength if he didn’t have weaker people to dominate? What would he do with himself if he didn’t keep us around as dependents? It’s quite all right, really, I’m not criticizing him, it’s just a law of human nature.” (p 43) Then Lillian adds, “He holds us all in bondage.”

Non-Contradiction: The Top and the Bottom

Atop a skyscraper is New York’s most expensive bar, set in a windowless room illuminated by blue light “proper for use in blackouts” (p 44) that reduces faces to a “pale, bluish smear” (p 46). Its “old, wizened bartender” was “servant to men’s relaxation and pleasure” but had the manner of an “embittered old quack ministering to some guilty disease” (p 49). Beneath a ceiling so low that people must stoop upon standing are “circular booths of dark red leather … built into walls of stone that look eaten by age an dampness” (p 44). James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Paul Larkin and Wesley Mouch (p 44, 45 & 47) sit at an “uncomfortably small” table, speaking in low voices that “befitted a cellar” (p 44). Taggart increases his companions’ discomfort by sitting “with his elbows spread wide on the table top” but “they did not seem to question his privilege (p 44-45).

Boyle and Taggart lament that Boyle “had everything mapped” to produce Taggart Transcontinental’s new rails but that “conditions … circumstances … [and] unforeseen developments” set in that were “beyond human control” (p 44). Boyle adds, “If only you’d given us a chance, Jim.” Taggart remarks that Dagny’s “disruptive tactics” is part of a “disunity” that is against his “absolute opinion” that “no business enterprise can succeed without sharing the burden of the problems of other enterprises.” Boyle agrees, “It’s been proved that very business depends upon every other business … So everybody ought to share the burdens of everybody else” (p 45). Mouch concurs, but “nobody every paid any attention to Wesley Mouch.” Orren Boyle makes additional declarations,

Regarding Rearden Metal’s usage by Taggart Transcontinental, Boyle states “you’re just inviting disaster” and Taggart responds, “my sister is” (p 45). After Boyle describes how “I hear there’s not a single expert who’s given a favorable report” on Rearden Metal, Taggart shrilly retorts, “When people are unanimous, how does one man dare to dissent? By what right? That’s what I want to know — by what right?” In response, Boyle continues his stream of declarations,

Boyle and Taggart agree that “there’s nothing more destructive than a monopoly” and “there’s the blight of unbridled competition” (p 46). Boyle states, “the proper course is always, in my mind, in my opinion, in the middle. So it is, I think, the duty of society to snip the extremes, now isn’t it?” Boyle’s position is clarified as he continues,

Taggart adapts Boyle’s thought to his own industry, whether “at a time of transportation shortages, when so many railroads are going bankrupt and large areas are left without rail service, whether it is in the public interest to tolerate wasteful duplication of services and the destructive, dog-eat-dog competition of newcomers in territories where established companies have historical priority” (p 47).

Boyle offers to raise the issue with the National Alliance of Railroads, prompting Taggart to lament on friendships then tell Larkin, “I am counting on your many friendships.” Larkin pleads “in a tone of incongruous despair, “I wish we didn’t have to hurt anybody.” Taggart drawls his response, “That is an antisocial attitude … People who are afraid to sacrifice somebody have no business talking about a common purpose” (p 47-48). Larkin pleads without addressing anyone, “I can’t be expected to buck the trend of the whole world” (p 48). Mouch confirms, “You can’t, Mr. Larkin … You and I are not to be blamed.” Larkin jerks his head away for “he could not bear to look at Mouch.”

At this point the conversation shifts tone, for “all of them seemed to know that the purpose of their meeting was accomplished and whatever they had come here to understand was understood” (p 48) The conversation shifts to the San Sebastián Mines, whose stock was invested in heavily by all those at the table. Boyle had just visited the mine, noting it had been “certainly busy” although a language barrier prevented him from understanding the “Spic superintendent.” Boyle cheers, “They must certainly have the biggest deposits of copper on earth, down inside that mountain!” Taggart asks of trouble, and Boyle continues, “Not at San Sebastián. It’s private property, the last piece of it left in Mexico, and that does seem to make a difference.” Taggart cautiously asks of nationalization (p 49). “Plain, vicious slander,” remarks Boyle, citing meals he shared with important Mexican politicians.

After a toast to “the sacrifices of historical necessity” the conversation drifts to Taggart Transcontinental’s questionable service to the San Sebastián Line (p 49). Boyle enlightens the unaware Taggart of “measly service” of “just one passenger train a day” and on a “wood-burning locomotive” that Boyle had only seen before in photographs. Of the comfort, Boyle adds, “You must have inherited those coaches from your great-grandfather, and he must have used them pretty hard. … It’s the strangest train I ever rode on. Nearly shook my guts out.” Taggart covers up his surprise by mentioning delays on new engines and ends with, “it’s only temporary.” He then grows silent before rising abruptly, prompting the end of the drink, because “he had to see his sister” (p 50).

An unnamed woman with a face of “angular planes” (p 12) and “dark gray eyes” (p 16) sits by the window in a coach seat on the Taggart Comet (p 15). “She looked like a young girl; only her mouth and eyes showed that she was a woman in her thirties.” (p 16) She listens to a brakeman whistle a tune with “the freedom of release and the tension of purpose” while hearing the train wheels knock in an even rhythm, “every fourth knock accented, as if stressing a conscious purpose.” (p 13) She knows the song is by composer Richard Halley, but then realizes she never heard it before and startles: “When did Richard Halley write this?” Despite knowing every note written by Halley, the song is foreign to her (p 14). She asks the brakeman what piece is and he tells her it is Richard Halley’s Fifth Concerto. She retorts that Halley only wrote four concertos, causing the brakeman to return to his work and evade further questioning.

The woman nods off but is reawakened by the silence of the stopped train (p 15). She rushes outside to find a small crowd of idle workers. She commands What’s the matter? She is informed that the train took a wrong track due to a faulty switch and has been stuck at a red light for an hour. The engineer dare not move the train forward because, “I don’t intend to stick my neck out.” The woman orders that the train cautiously proceed forward and return to the main track. When asked who she is, she responds without offense: Dagny Taggart. She is only the Vice President in Charge of Operations, but once she returns inside the engineer remarks, “that’s who runs Taggart Transcontinental” to the brakeman (p 17). The train soon jolts back into motion.

Upon arriving in New York, Dagny Taggart meets with James Taggart to state that she cancelled the Orren Boyle contract for the Rio Norte Line steel and placed an order with Hank Rearden for the brand-new alloy called Rearden Metal (p 20). Dagny makes this move to out-compete the Phoenix-Durango, which won the Wyatt Oil contract that had been in the hands of Taggart Transcontinental (p 21). James buckles to Dangy’s decision only when he is assured that she takes full responsibility for her decisions (p 23).

Dagny returns to her office and immediately has Eddie Willers get Ayers Music Publishing Company on the phone (p 24). Dagny asks Mr. Ayers if Richard Halley ever wrote a fifth conerto, but he has not. Next she has a meeting with Owen kellogg, who had “the face of a man with whom she could deal.” Dangy is about to offer Mr. Kellogg the post of Superintendent of the Ohio Division (p 26) but Mr. Kellogg resigns before she can do so (p 25). He offers no reason for his choice to quit except, “Who is John Galt?”

Dagny Taggart’s childhood is exposited, beginning when she was nine years old and decided to someday run Taggart Transconintental Railroad (p 50). Dagny was not alone, as “she and Eddie Willers had given themselves to the railroad from the first conscious days of their childhood.” Her ascension of the Taggart Transcontinental’s corporate ladder is recounted (p 51). At sixteen she began work as a night operator; thereafter she climbed “like advancing through empty rooms” by commanding the authority that her superiors held “but seemed afraid to exercise”; “nobody opposed her, yet nobody approved of her progress.”

Interwoven with Dagny Taggart’s history is that of her brother, James Taggart (p 52). After their father’s death, James inherited the controlling stock of Taggart Transcontinental was left to James Taggart. As the eldest son — and thus the traditional President — the Board of Directors promptly and eagerly elected James as President “in the same manner as they refused to walk under a ladder.” The Board spoke of James’ knack at “making railroads popular” and his “Washington ability” — “he seemed unusually skillful at obtaining favors from the Legislature.”

Francisco d’Anconia is dramatically introduced as having his name across “the ticker tape of every stock exchange” and “scandalous headlines” (p 53). The last descendent of one of Argentina’s noblest families, he inherited his fortune at 23 years old and was “the copper king of the world”; now at 36 years old he was “the most spectacularly worthless playboy on earth.” His inherited assets were formidable: “most of the copper mines of Chile”; “half of South America”; and cattle ranches, coffee plantations and sundry mines scattered from South to North America. His recent endeavor was the San Sebastián mines, whose stock had been “begged out of his hands” and which was owned mostly by James Taggart, Orren Boyle and “their friends.”

James Taggart’s “first step” as President was to build a railroad branch from Texas into “the wilderness of San Sebastián” (p 52-53). Dagny “thought of the many branch lines which Taggart Transcontinental had had to abandon” and the “ominous need for repairs, ominously neglected over the entire system” (p 54). The Board’s approach to maintenance seemed like a game “with a piece of rubber that could be stretched a little, then a little more.” “The company needed all its resources to rebuild the Rio Norte Line; it could not do both” (p 53). Dagny was “only an assistant in the Operating Department, too young, without authority, and nobody listened” as she fought via “whoever would listen to her” against building the San Sebastián Line (p 54). “She was unable then or since, to understand the motives of those who decided to build the line.” She was a mere “helpless spectator” — a “minority member” — and when the Board met she felt a “strange evasiveness” and that “the real reason of their decision was never stated, but clear to everyone except herself.”

The People’s State of Mexico was certainly eager to accommodate,

Dagny sat listening as the Board prepared to vote on the San Sebastián Line (p 54),

Dagny was apparently distracted,

The Board continued to rattle,

The vote passed. Dagny left the Board room with two words repeating “in the numbed emptiness of her mind” — Get out (p 55). She was not alone in her thoughts — “two of the directors resigned; so did the Vice-President in Charge of Operation. He was replaced by a friend of James Taggart.” However, Dagny is “aghast” at herself and stymies thoughts of resigning,

Dagny felt differently three years later, when construction of the San Sebastián Line “had been under way for three years” yet only “one third of its track was laid” (p 56) and the budget had exceeded 30 million dollars (p 55-56). Dagny gave her brother an “ultimatum” (p 56),

Budgeted at 30 million dollars (p 55), building the San Sebastián Line was marred by: “five years of struggle”; “miles of wasted track”; and losses “like a red trickle from a wound which would not heal” (p 52-53). As the San Sebastián Line grew “at the rate of two miles a month” the shot track of the Rio Norte Line caused a train carrying a Wyatt Oil shipment to go “hurtling down an embankment and into a blazing junk pile” (p 55). An “obscure railroad” called Phoenix-Durango which was “struggling well” shipped Wyatt Oil thereafter. Once the Vice-President in Charge of Operation, it was Dagny “who finally gave them their San Sebastián Line” by firing “Jim’s friends” and hiring McNamara of Cleveland (p 63 s 133) “who completed the job in one year” (p 56).

A year after the line’s completion, “no surge of trade” nor “trains loaded with copper” had “come across the border” (p 56). As “a few car-loads came clattering” along the San Sebastián Line, “the drain on Taggart Transcontinental had not stopped.” Dagny now sat at her office amidst “sheets of figures announcing losses and more losses” with the knowledge that the route to “save the system” was to rebuild the Rio Norte Line. A “point of support” is “one thing, at least, that could be counted upon not to crumble when needed: Rearden’s response “Sure” when Dagny had called from Cleveland (p 19) to query if he could provide “rail on the shortest notice and the longest credit possible” as a way of asking, “Hank, can you save us?” Conversely, Dagny Taggart sees one name above all others across the failure of the San Sebastián Line, the same name on “cards attached to flowers in the boudoirs of women scattered through three continents” — Francisco d’Anconia (p 53).

James Taggart approaches Dagny’s desk “like a child being dragged to punishment, storing the resentment for all his future years” (p 56). After what Orren Boyle had told him about the San Sebastián Line’s abhorrent service (p 49), James demands to know what Dagny is “trying to pull on the San Sebastián Line” with its infrequent service (p 57). Dagny explains to a heated James Taggart that “the one passenger train a day” and “one freight train every other night” don’t even pay for themselves. James insists the Mexicans “expect real service” — Dagny responds, “I’m sure they do.” He iterates that “they need trains” — Dagny queries, “for what?” He explains, to “develop local industries” — but Dagny remains succinct, “I don’t expect them to develop.” James retorts, “The copper traffic alone will pay for everything” — Dagny only asks, “When?”

James grows more venomous as his face assumes the “satisfaction of a person about to utter something that hurt” (p 57). Watching Dagny’s face, James asks if she doubts the San Sebastián Mines will succeed, “When it’s Francisco d’Anconia who’s running them?” Dagny states that Francisco d’Anconia “has turned into a worthless bum” who she has not been friends with for “the last ten years.” James continues to inject venom, “I always thought that’s what he was .. but you didn’t share my opinion. … Shall I quote some of the things you said about him? I can only surmise as to some of the things you did.” Dagny’s emotionless face if James came to discuss Francisco d’Anconia, causing James’ face to show the “anger of failure” as he switches topics.

After berating Dagny for the San Sebastián Line schedule, James Taggart rebukes her equipment selection (p 58). “What sort of rolling stock are you using down there?” “The worst I could find.” “You admit that?” “I’ve stated it on the paper in the reports I sent you.” When asked about the wood-burning locomotives, Dagny mentions “Eddie found them for me in sombody’s abandoned roundhouse down in Louisiana.” James is incredulous, but Dagny is open that she “left nothing but junk” and moved “everything that could be moved — switch engines, shop tools, even typewriters and mirrors — out of Mexico.” James continues to demand answers: “What’s going on?”; “What in blazes?”; and even “What in hell’s the big idea?” — until reaching the core of Dagny’s reasoning: “the looters won’t have as much to loot when they nationalize the line.”

James leaps to his feet, seemingly more incredulous than before (p 58). Yet when Dagny insists “there’s not a car, engine or ton of coal that we can spare anywhere” James only responds that he “absolutely won’t permit such an outrageous police toward a friendly people who need our help.” Dagny prepares a pad and pencil and asks James which cars to cut from what lines to run how many trains on the San Sebastián Lines. He dismisses this as her “usual rotten trick” of “switching the responsibility” and that he will not let her trap him (p 58-59). Just as James leaves Dagny’s office, he states he’ll demand a decision “once and for all” on her department’s authority and that she’ll “have to answer for this” (p 59).

After nightfall, Dagny leaves her office after “the small defeat of being tired” (p 59). She exits the building through the Taggart Terminal instead of the lobby because “she liked to walk through it on her way home” — “she had always felt that the concourse looked like a temple.” A statue of Taggart Transcontinental’s found, Nathaniel Taggart, dominated the concourse (p 59) — “all that Dagny wanted of life was contained in the desire to hol her head as he did” (p 60). A brief biography of Nathaniel Taggart ensues that samples the “notorious” legends of how he founded and ran Taggart Transcontinental without “force or fraud” nor government funds, grants or favors (p 59-60). Admiring the statue “was a moment’s rest” from “a burden she could not name” (p 61).

Dagny makes her regular stop at a newsstand operated by a man who “seemed to be part of the Taggart Terminal” like a feeble watchdog whose loyal presence was reassuring (p 61). The man liked to see her coming because “he alone knew” the importance of the approaching figure. The two enter a discussion of cigarettes and their tie to human thought, wondering “what great things” have come from the hours “watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking.” Dagny involuntarily asks “do they every think?” and the man begins to reflect on his observations on the past “hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there” that has morphed into “fear” as the “purpose that drives them” lately.

Eddie Willers heads to dinner in the employees’ underground cafeteria — instead of a building restaurant “patronized by Taggart executives” — because “he felt more at home” in a place that “seemed part of the railroad” (p 62). When Eddie’s path crosses that of a particular worker, they continue “their habit to dine together” where Eddie can “talk as he did not talk anywhere else” and “admit things he would not confess to anyone.”

Entering the cafeteria this evening, Eddie notices the worker and they sit together, allowing Eddie to chatter with the “silent presence” with an “enormous intensity” in the only thing of importance to Eddie Willer: Taggart Transcontinental (p 62). “The Rio Norte Line is our last hope … I’m not any kind of a great man. I couldn’t have built that railroad. If it goes … I’ll have to go with it” (p 62-63). Asked about who will lay the Rio Norte Line’s new rail, Eddie responds, “McNamara, of Cleveland” (p 63).

Non-Contradiction: The Immovable Movers

Dagny Taggart visits the United Locomotive Works plant in New Jersey — having made Taggart Transcontinental wait for two Diesel engines for two years (p 63 s 133) — to see the company’s president (p 64 s 141). Heading through the plant, Dagny felt a “burst of too violent an anger” when she saw a machine that was not “worn out” but “rotted by neglect” and left to rust. Her meeting with the president is fruitless: no reasons are given for the delays; no production date is indicated; and Dagny’s attempts to get specific answers only net “condescending reproach” as though she “were giving proof of ill-breeding by breaking some unwritten code known to everyone else.” Dagny returns to New York City, and upon seeing the Taggart Building she thinks that it does not rest on pillars, but “on the engines that rolled across a continent.” The Taggart Building’s first need is “motive power, to keep that building standing; movement, to keep it immovable.”

When Dagny enters her office, Eddie Willers reveals that the Rio Norte Line contractor “left. retired. went out of business.” (p 64 s 141) Dagny is stunned, leaving one of her gloves “half-removed and forgotten” (p 65). No answers are available to her questions — “why?” “what happened?” “what did he say?” “where?” — and Eddie states, “He’s walked out of a pile of contracts that are worth a fortune. He had a waiting list of clients for the next three years. … I wouldn’t be frightened if I could understand it. . . . But a thing that can’t possibly have any reason. … He was the best contractor in the country.” Dagny wanted to say “Oh God, Eddie!” but keeps her voice even and declares another contractor will be found for the Rio Norte Line.

Dagny leaves her office filled with a “peculiar emptiness, which was not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as though nothing within her were destroyed, but everything stood still” (p 65 s 141). Despite being the “motive power of her own happiness” she wanted for once to be “carried by the power of someone else’s achievement” (p 65) “as men on a dark prairie liked to see the lighted windows of a train going past” for reassurance “in the midst of empty miles and night” (p 66).

Dagny fails to find any comfort in the achievements she sees en route home (p 66 s 141). A radio plays a symphony with “no melody, no harmony, no rhythm” as though a “scream of chaos, of the irrational, of the helpless, of man’s self-abdication.” A bookstore displays stacks of The Vulture Is Molting, with placards hailing it as a “penetrating study of a businessman’s greed” and a “fearless revelation of man’s depravity.” A theater displays a severely bright billboard of an uninspiring woman and a tagline hailing it as a “momentous drama” of whether “should a woman tell?” A couple staggers out of a nightclub, the woman’s gown falling “like a slovenly housewife’s bathrobe” to expose her breast not in daring but as a “drudge’s indifference.” The man’s face did not show anticipation of a romantic adventure but the slyness of “a boy out to write obscenities on fences.”

Dagner grabs a newspaper before getting to her apartment on the “top floor of a skyscraper” (p 66 s 141) and playing a record of Richard Halley’s last symphony, his Fourth Concerto (p 67). The sounds of his music say to “we who hold the love and the secret of joy” that “there is no necessity for pain — why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity?” Dagny listens with “her head thrown back, her eyes closed … half-stretched across the corner of a couch” (p 68).

A biography of Richard Halley ensues. His life begins in “garrets and basements” with a struggle “without the relief of violence” against a “deaf wall” of “indifference” while his compositions “overflowed with violent color” (p 67). One of his operas nets “booing and catcalls” but nineteen years later arouses the “greatest ovation the opera house had ever heard” (p 68). Reviews go from unforgiving to unforgivable: “It is noble that he he should have endured suffering, injustice, abuse at the hands of his brothers — in order to enrich their lives.” The day after his successful opening, Halley abruptly sold his works to his publisher, retired to an undisclosed location and offered no explanation except that “his career was over.”

Dagny goes to push her newspaper out of sight when she notices the face of Francisco d’Anconia on one of its pages (p 69). She struggles — “what of it?” “don’t read it” “don’t look at it” — with how his face is unchanged: “how could a face remain the same when everything else was gone?” Dagny struggles further to restrain herself from reading the newspaper, “not now — not to that music — oh, not to that music!” However, she buckles and reads a scandalous article regarding the married Mrs. Vail who tried to kill her husband to be with her lover Francisco d’Anconia; the only comment from Francisco d’Anconia is, “I never deny anything.” Furthermore, he arrives in New York City at the height of the scandal because, “I wanted to witness the farce.” The paper slips from Dagny’s hands and lets her head rest on her arm, crying while the chords of Halley’s music emanate “her quest, her cry.”

His eyes still “sticky with sleep” and pained by light, James Taggart stumbles into his living room at twenty minutes past noon to find out the time (p 70 s 142). Betty Pope is in the bathroom cleaning her teeth. Betty belonged to “one of the very best families” and has a “homely face, a bad complexion and a look of impertinent condescension” — she is a “lanky girl” however, although her “bones and loose joints” fail to “move smoothly.” Of James and Betty’s relationship,

James and Betty call at each other from different rooms about various issues: “I’ve got to dress”; “I’ve got to trim my toe-nails”; “I have a headache”; “this place smells” (p 70). Betty remarks to James, “you look unappetizing in the morning … like a snail” to which he responds, “Why don’t you shut up?” Betty mentions her own engagements — “I hate morning. Here’s another day and nothing to do.” James, however, has a “very important” meeting with the Board of Directors (p 71). Betty gives James a sly glance and her drawling voice grows livelier, “It’s your sister who runs the whole works.” James knows this already, “I’m putting the skids under my sister this afternoon. … It’s the chance I’ve been waiting for.” His ammunition is, “She’s pulled an inexcusable sort of stunt … against our Mexican neighbors. When the Board hears about it … they’ll pass a couple of new rulings … which will make my sister easier to manage.” James sounds pleased hereafter, but then he gets a call from a hysterical Jules Mott, his “political man in Mexico.”

The nationalization of the San Sebastián Mines and San Sebastián Railroad earlier that day (p 72 s 142) derails james Taggart’s plan to put Dagny Taggart “in her place” (p 71 s 142) at the Board of Directors Meeting. Instead, he offers unfounded consolation after the “unfortunate development” of nationalization: “I have full confidence — based on my knowledge of the inner processes shaping our foreign policy in Washington — that our government will negotiate an equitable settlement with the government of the People’s State of Mexico.”

James Taggart next takes takes credit for Dagny Taggart’s wise service and equipment cuts in anticipation of the nationalization that “saved the company many millions of dollars” (p 72 s 143). After pointing out this highlight, James Taggart states that those who “bore the major responsibility for this venture should now bear the consequences.” After suggesting a few names, James Taggart has not just shifted responsibility from himself but from those at the meeting as well: “they did not think of what they would have to do, but of what they would have to say to the men they represented. Taggart’s speech gave them what they needed.”

James Taggart returns to his office to find Orren Boyle waiting for him (p 73 s 144). Boyle confirms “d’Anconia’s lost fifteen million dollars of his own money in those mines” and nobody knows what d’Anconia will do about it. James is convinced d’Anconia will “get the last word” and that James and Boyle must make sure they are “in on” whatever d’Anconia has on the “Greaser politicians.” Boyle places this responsibility on James — “You’re his friend” “Friend be damned! I hate his guts.”– but James is stunned when his secretary is unable to secure him an appointment with d’Anconia. “Señor d’Anconia said that you bore him, Mr. Taggart.”

The annual meeting is held of the National Alliance of Railroads, an alliance of railroad presidents to “protect the welfare of the railroad industry” with each member having “pledged” and “committed” to “subordinate his own interests to those of the industry as a whole” (p 74 s 145). Up for vote is the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule, which “they did not like” and hoped “would never be brought up.” Regarding the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule,

The speeches preceding the vote “dealt only with the public welfare” and “no railroad was mentioned by name” (p 74 s 145). During the vote itself “every one of them had hoped that someone would save them from it” (p 75 s 145). Regardless, the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule passes. After the meeting adjourns “nobody spoke to or looked at Dan Conway.” He remains sitting “alone among rows of empty seats” until hastened to leave by the charwoman. Meanwhile, as James Taggart leaves, he runs into Orren Boyle who waited in the lobby “just for the fun of it” and states, “I’ve delivered. It’s your turn now, Jimmie.”

James Taggart rushes to Dagny’s office — “the first time he had ever entered in such manner” — after not seeking Dagny since the San Sebastián Line was nationalized (p 75 s 145). She had been “contemptuously amused” by “being proved right so eloquently” (p 76 s 145). She felt that “in all reason and justice, there was but one conclusion he could draw.” Perhaps this is why Dagny leaps to her feet so suddenly that a glass ashtray crashes to the floor when James yells,

“You rotten bastards!” is her only response. Dagny is “shaking, open to him, without defense” until James smiles “– and suddenly the blinding anger vanished. She felt nothing. She studied that smile with a cold, impersonal curiosity” (p 76 s 145). James was “gloating” and “the event meant something to him much beyond the destruction of a competitor.” This was not James’ victory over the Phoenix-Durango, but over Dagny Taggart — “and she felt certain that he knew.” Dagny feels for an instant that what that what “made him smile” was an unexpected secret that was “crucially important” she understand. Yet this instant “flashed and vanished” and without saying another word she rushes out of the office, leaving James “disappointed and faintly worried” (p 76-77 s 145).

Dagny rushes to the Phoenix-Durango’s city office, prompting a gentle and lifeless Dan Conway to state, “Funny, I thought you would come” (p 77 s 146). Dagny tries to save the Phoenix-Durango: “Dan, you have to fight them. I’ll help you. … That Alliance agreement that you signed? It won’t hold. … No court will uphold it. And if Jim tries to hide behind the usual looters’ slogan of ‘public welfare’ I’ll go on the stand and swear that Taggart Transcontinental can’t handle the whole traffic of Colorado.”

Dan states “they had the right to do it” because he had “promised to obey the majority” and thus does not want to fight the decision (p 77 s 146). He feels “helpless astonishment” when the majority passes the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule (p 78 s 146). Dan elaborates:

Dan sees “no way out” because despite the Rule being “so damn unjust” to him, it would be “wrong” and “selfish” to fight it (p 78-79 s 146). Apparently his version of the common good was originally optimistic, “They said all of us were to stand for the common good. I thought what I had done down there in Colorado was good. Good for everybody” (p 78 s 146). Now his views have been reduced, “I don’t know what’s right any more. … I don’t think I care” (p 79 s 146). Dagny realizes “suddenly” that “all further words were useleless and that Dan Conway would never be a man of action again.”

With his future “as it was twenty years ago” with only line a line in Arizona now left to run, Dan seems to lack a discrete focus (p 79 s 146). “Guess I’ll take it easy now. Guess I’ll go fishing.” Dagny wonders what defeated Dan Conway because a “man of this kind” could not have been broken by James Taggart. She wants Dan to know her feelings are not “out of pity or charity or any ugly reason like that” but because she intended to “give you the battle of your life” and “drive you out, if necessary” (p 80 s 146). Dagny then cries out “Oh God, Dan, I don’t want to be a looter!” and she does not event want to look at the Rio Norte Line anymore.

Dan tells Dagny to get the Rio Norte Line ready before the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule takes effect in nine months (p 80 s 146). “If you don’t, that will be the end of Ellis Wyatt and all the rest of them down there, and they’re the best people left in the country. … Whatever you do, you won’t be a looter. No looter could run a railroad in that part of the country and last at it. Whatever yo make down there, you will have earned it. Lice like your brother don’t count, anyway.” Dan smile with sadness and pity. “You’d better not feel sorry for me … of the two of us, it’s you who have [sic] the harder time ahead. And I think you’re going to get it worse than I did.”

Dagny has just made an appointment with Hank Rearden for that afternoon when Ellis Wyatt enters her office unannounced and introduces himself (p 81 s 147). Unsmiling, he delivers an ultimatum, “I expect Taggart Transcontinental, nine months from now, to run trains in Colorado as my business requires them to be run.” Dagny asks to tell him of her Rio Norte Line plans. Ellis Wyatt remains unforgiving of the “snide stunt you people perpetrated on the Phoenix-Durango” by replying, “No. I have no interest in discussions and intentions. I expect transportation.”

Dagny confirms that Ellis Wyatt will receive the transportation he needs (p 82 s 147). He responds “All right. Thank you. Good day.” before leaving her office.

Dagny is in Hank Rearden’s office and states that her “almost impossible schedule to complete the Rio Norte Line in twelve months” has been shortened to nine months (p 82 s 148). “Can you give it to us within nine months? … If not, I’ll have to find some other means to finish it.” Rearden keeps his eyes “horizontal, impassively half-closed” and responds, “I’ll do it.” To Dagny, this response is not “merely relief” but “shock” since it evokes “the sudden realization that nothing else was necessary to guarantee that it would be done … a complex problem could rest safely on three syllables pronounced by a man who knew what he was saying.” He mocks her by adding, “Don’t show that you’re relieved.”

The nature of Dagny and Hank’s relationship is elaborated by a short and simple exchange beginning with Hank Rearden,

Dagny Taggart optimistically declares,

Hank Rearden is also optimistic,

Hank directs Dagny to watch Taggart Transcontinental’s first delivery of Rearden Metal get loaded into a freight car (p 86 s 148). She states, as if “greeting a new phenomenon of nature” simply: Rearden Metal. Rearden notices but says nothing. Dagny continues, “Hank, this is great.” He responds “simply, openly” with “no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty” simply “Yes.” Dagny recognizes this as the rarest tribute possible, the “tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one’s own greatness, knowing that it is understood.”

Dagny and Hank discuss the automotive, ground, sky and other possibilities for Rearden Metal (p 87 s 148). It is as if they stood “on a mountain top, seeing a limitless plain below and roads open in all directions.” Yet instead they stood speaking “of mathematical figures, of weights, pressures, resistances, costs.” Dagny forgets her every “problem, person and event behind her” because the moment she shares with Hank Rearden — “of purpose, of lightness, of hope” — is reality and the way “she had expected to live — she had wanted to spend no hour and take no action that would mean less than this. … If joy is the aim and the core of existence, she thought, and if that which has the power to give one joy is always guarded as one’s deepest secret, then they had seen each other naked in that moment.”

Hank says not “casually” but with “no feeling in his voice”, “indifferently, as a statement of fact” that: “We’re a couple of blackguards, aren’t we? … We haven’t any spiritual goals or qualities. All we’re after is material things. That’s all we care for.” (p 87 s 148) The accusation does not trouble Dagny because “she never thought of herself in such terms and she was completely incapable of experiencing a feeling of fundamental guilt.” Yet she feels “vague apprehension” that there was a graveness to “whatever had made him say it, something dangerous to him.” He continues with the “calm of an inviolate self-confidence” — “Dagny … whatever we are, it’s we who move the world and it’s we who’ll pull it through” (p 88 s 148).

Non-Contradiction: The Climax of the d’Anconias

Upon arriving in her office, a “tense and bewildered” Eddie Willers presents Dagny Taggart with the newspaper (p 89 s 151). She sits looking at it long after she finishes reading, confirms he had been right to feel fear upon reading it himself — “even though he could not tell what frightened him about that story.”

Eddie Willers states, “Francisco is not a fool. … He couldn’t have made a mistake of this kind. It is not possible. I don’t understand it.” (p 89 s 151) Dagny orders Eddie to phone “the bastard that I want to see him” (p 90 s 151). Eddie reproachfully states “it’s Frisco d’Anconia” but Dagny only responds with “It was.” d’Anconia agrees to meet Dagny any time she wishes (p 90 s 152).

Dagny walks to the Wayne-Falkland Hotel to see Francisco d’Anconia (p 90 s 152). A childhood flashback ensues to the annual summer month that Francisco spent at the Taggart estate (p 90 s 152), a practice that began when Dagny was 9 and Francisco was 11 (p 91 s 152). To Francisco “the Taggart children were not Jim and Dagny, but Dagny and Eddie. He seldom volunteered to notice Jim’s existence.” (p 90 s 152). However, Francisco did once explain to James Taggart that being a d’Anconia was not merely a name: “None of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d’Anconia. We are expected to become one.” (p 90-91) On the topic of names, Dagny and Francisco nicknamed each other, a practice they resented only initially (p 91 s 152). Dagny was Slug; when she angrily asks Francisco’s meaning by this, he responded, “In case you don’t know it, ‘Slug’ means a great fire in a locomotive firebox.” Francisco was Frisco; it was Dagny’s retaliation.

Dagny and Eddie spent winters trying to master some new skill so when Francisco returned they could “beat him, for once” — but “they never succeeded” (p 92 s 152). Francisco showed his prowess at baseball when he observed Dagny and Eddie for a few minutes, then “took the bat and sent the ball flying over a line of oak trees at the far end of the field” (p 93 s 152). Another time, Dagny, Eddie and Francisco are watching from the shore as James clumsily tries to drive a motorboat for the first time. When the motorboat is disembarked, Francisco hops on and, behind the wheel of a motorboat the first time, sends it “out to the middle of the river, as if fired from a gun.” Mr. Taggart eyes Francisco speed away with the same look as when he discovered that a 12 year old Francisco — with just two years of algebra education — had independently developed a crude differential equation whilst designing a pulley system for an elevator.

Eyeing the the triumvirate from a distance, James watched Francisco with “a peculiar kind of intensity” (p 94 s 152). Rarely uttering a word in Francisco’s presence, James instead derisively cornered Dagny. “All those airs you put on, pretending that you’re an iron woman with a mind of your own! You’re a spineless dishrag, that’s all you are. … You haven’t any pride at all. The way you run when he whistles and wait on him! Why don’t you shine his shoes?” “Because he hasn’t told me to.” Dagny and Eddie are Francisco’s only friends, although “they could not tell whether they owned him or were owned by him completely; it made no difference; either concept made them happy” (p 94-95 s 152).

During his second summer at the Taggart estate, in addition to his elevator project, Francisco began to vanish each morning until lunchtime (p 92 s 152). A worried Mrs. Taggart investigates and finds Francisco working incognito as Frankie at a Taggart Transcontinental division point ten miles away. Mrs. Taggart terminates his “unofficial deal with the dispatcher” at once on grounds that he does not have parental permission to work. The dispatcher is sad to lose “the best call boy they ever had” and fruitlessly asks, “Maybe we could make a deal with his parents?” Back at the Taggart estate, Mrs. Taggart, James and Dagny each query Francisco (p 92 s 152). Mrs. Taggart asks what Francisco’s father would say. “My father would ask whether I was good at the job or not. … Last winter … I shipped out … on a cargo steamer … my father looked for me for three months, but that’s all he asked me when I came back.” James Taggart smiles with the “triumph of finding cause to feel contempt” and asks Francisco if his winters are usually as such. Francisco’s pleasant, innocent and casual tone does not change, “That was last winter … The winter before last I spent in Madrid, at the home of the Duke of Alba.” Dagny asks Francisco why he wanted to work on a railroad. “To learn what it’s like, Slug … and to tell you that I’ve had a job with Taggart Transcontinental before you did.”

During his fifth summer at the Taggart estate, Francisco, Dagny and Eddie walked through the woods (p 95 s 152). At only 15 years old, Francisco says, “Dagny, I’ll always bow to a coat-of-arms. I’ll always worship the symbols of nobility. Am I not supposed to be an aristocrat? Only I don’t give a damn for moth-eaten turrets and tenth-hand unicorns. The coats-of-arms of our day are to be found on billboards and in the ads of popular magazines.” Eddie asks Francisco’s meaning. “Industrial trademarks, Eddie.”

When Francisco concluded his sixth summer at the Taggart estate, Dagny “thought that his departure was like the crossing of a frontier which ended his childhood: he was to start college, that fall. Her turn would come next. She felt an eager impatience touched by the excitement of fear, as if he had leaped into an unknown danger. It was like the moment, years ago, when she had seen him dive first from a rock into the Hudson, had seen him vanish under the black water and had stood, knowing he would reappear in an instant and that it would then be her turn to follow.” (p 97 s 152) Yet Dagny was haunted by a remark she heard once about Francisco, “That boy is vulnerable. He has too great a capacity for joy. What will he do with it in a world where there’s so little occasion for it?” (p 97-98 s 152) The words stirred apprehension as a warning would, yet Dagny dismissed them because to her Francisco was proof that the “world she saw ahead was real, even though it was not the world of those around her” (p 98 s 152).

Dagny and Francisco do not communicate at all while he is away at college; “she knew he would come back to the country for one summer month” (p 98 s 152). At the start of Francisco’s seventh Taggart summer, Dagny and Francisco share a moment’s look not of “greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day that year”. As they walk, “she felt that there was a new reticence between them which, strangely, was a new kind of intimacy” (p 99 s 152).

Later, while Dagny (now 15) and Francisco (now 17) are alone in a forest, Dagny wonders “why she was so aware of her enjoyment, of her movements, of her body in the process of walking. She did not want to look at Francisco. She felt that his presence seemed more intensely real when she kept her eyes away from him, almost as if the stressed awareness of herself came from him, like the sunlight from the water.” (p 99-100 s 152) Francisco declaring, “Let me see how far you’ll rise with Taggart Transcontinental” (p 100 s 152) “Why do you think that I care to prove anything to you?” “Want me to answer?” “No.” Francisco chuckles before stating,

Dagny feels like she and Francisco are “the only ones who seem to know it” — something which Dagny cares at all about because, “I like to understand things, and there’s something about people that I can’t understand” (p 100 s 152). “What?” “I’ve always been unpopular in school and it didn’t bother me, but now I’ve discovered the reason. It’s an impossible kind of reason. They dislike me, not because I do things badly, but because I do them well. They dislike me because I’ve always had the best grades in the class. I don’t even have to study. I always get A’s. Do you suppose I should try to get D’s for a change and become the most popular girl in school?” Francisco stopped, looked at Dagny and slapped her.

The next summer, Dagny (16) tells Francisco (18) that she has begun working as a night operator for Taggart Transcontinental (p 101 s 152). “All right, Taggart Transcontinental, now it’s a race. Let’s see who’ll do greater honor, you — to Nat Taggart, or I — to Sebastián d’Anconia.”

The flashbacks of the Taggart summers melt away to allow exposition of the relationship between Dagny and her mother. Mrs. Taggart felt she had no chance to “form some conception of her own daughter” as Dagny was only a “slim figure in a leather jacket, with a raised collar, a short skirt and long show-girl legs” who hurried in and out (p 102 s 152). What left Mrs. Taggart in “unhappy bewilderment” however was that “Dagny showed no romantic inclination whatsoever” (p 101 s 152). When she once asked Dagny if she ever wanted to have a good time, Dagny incredulously answered, “What do you think I’m having?”

It was thus an astonished relief to Mrs. Taggart when Dagny agreed with “inexplicable eagerness, for once like a child” to have a “formal debut” to New York society at the Wayne-Falkland (p 102 s 152). A second astonishment occurred when Dagny was dressed for the party; she looked not like “a preposterous contrast” but “like a beauty.” Mrs. Taggart “had an artist’s taste” and the decoration of the Wayne-Falkland ballroom that evening “was her masterpiece” (p 103 s 152). When Mrs. Taggart points out the minutiae — “Lights, colors, flowers, music. They’re not as negligible as you might think.” — Dagny responds, “I’ve never thought they’re negligible.” Mrs. Taggart for once feels a bond with Dagny, as Dagny looks at her mother “with a child’s grateful trust.”

By the end of the evening Mrs. Taggart feels less than relieved. Dagny’s face is “contemptuously empty” while she sits “as if she were dressed in slacks” and talks with “helpless young men” (p 103 s 152). Mrs. Taggart nor Dagny say a word to each other until hours later when Mrs. Taggart visits Dagny’s room. Dagny’s face reveals only “puzzled helplessness” and Mrs. Taggart wishes she had not hoped for her daughter to discovered sadness. “Mother, do they think it’s exactly in reverse. … The lights and the flowers. Do the expect those things to make them romantic, not the other way around? … There wasn’t a person there who enjoyed it … or who felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant.” “One is simply supposed to be gay.” “By being stupid?” “Didn’t you enjoy meeting the young men?” “There wasn’t a man there I couldn’t squash ten of.” (p 103-104 s 152)

The literary spotlight shifts to Francisco’s next summer at the Taggart estate. One evening, Dagny interrupts a long silence between her and Francisco by leaving too early for work (p 104 s 152). “Hurrying angrily up the slope to the house, she wondered what had made her leave; she did not know; it had been a sudden restlessness that came from a feeling she did not identify till now: a feeling of expectation.” Francisco tosses her a mocking glance of the kind “he reserved for others, a glance that seemed to see too much.”

Dagny sees the same glance again when she and Francisco are playing tennis (p 104 s 152). They played often and he always won, but at some point earlier in the game Dagny had decided to win and she was left with a “quiet fury rising within her.”

Francisco visited Dagny unexpectedly that night while she worked alone at Rockdale (p 106 s 152). He sat in a corner — “one leg thrown over the arm of his chair” — and waited. “She worked swiftly, feeling inordinately clear-headed … but when a thin sheet of paper fluttered down to the floor and she bent to pick it up, she was suddenly as intently conscious of that particular moment, of herself and her own movement. … She felt her heart stop causelessly in the kind of gasp one feels in moments of anticipation. She picked up the paper and turned back to her desk.”

When the day operator arrived, Dagny and Francisco took an old forest trail back to the Taggart estate (p 107 s 152). They stop at a clearing and Francisco seizes Dagny — “she knew, only when he did it, that she had known he would. … She tried to pull herself away, but she only leaned back against his arms long enough to see his face and his smile, the smile that told her she had given him permission long ago. She thought that she must escape; instead, it was she who pulled his head down to find his mouth again.”

Dagny and Francisco continue to meet that sumer “in the woods, in hidden corners by the river, on the floor of an abandoned shack, in the cellar of the house” and even during the winter when Francisco would omit an evening from his studies to take Dagny to his Manhattan apartment (p 108-109 s 152). Francisco “taught her every manner of sensuality he could invent. … They were both incapable of the conception that joy is sin.” It is only while having sex with Francisco that Dagny “learned to feel a sense of beauty” — yet Dagny and Francisco keep their sex a secret “not as a shameful guilt, but as a thing that was immaculately theirs, beyond anyone’s right of debate or appraisal.”

Dagny would brag to Francisco about her Taggart Transcontinental employment, while Francisco was ordered by his father not to work for d’Anconia until after college (p 109 s 152). Yet after Francisco (20 yo) graduates — and after a Buenos Aires visit to see his father — he heads straight to New York and tells Dagny that he has been working in a copper foundry while attending college and now owns it. “He showed her a photograph of the foundry. It was a small, grimy place, disreputable with age, battered by years of a losing struggle; above its entrance gate, like a new flag on the mast of a derelict, hung the sign: d’Anconia Copper.” (p 110 s 152)

Dagny and Francisco see each other rarely and randomly after his college graduation in fall, when he left for Montana as assistant superintendent of a d’Anconia mine (p 110 s 152). “She liked it, because it made him a continuous presence in her life, like the ray of a hidden light that could hit her at any moment.” By spring Francisco was head of the New York office of d’Anconia Copper, driving his business with the same “smooth, dangerous, confidently mastered speed” as when he drove the motorboat at age 12. Yet at one point Dagny was shocked,

When Francisco inherits d’Anconia Copper at age 23, he writes brief notes to Dagny until calling for her during a spring day 3 years later (p 111 s 152). When she enters his hotel room that evening,

Dagny feels “certain of nothing except that she must not ask questions” and they greet with nothing but greetings and a kiss (p 112 s 152. They do not utter “the words they had never said to each other — even though they knew that both had said and heard them in that moment.”

At dinner that evening and with no “transition or warning, he asked, his voice oddly unstressed, ‘Dagny, what would you say if I asked you to leave Taggart Transcontinental and let it go to hell, as it will when your brother takes over?” (p 113 s 152) Dagny angrily responds she would say the same thing as if he had asked her to commit suicide.

In bed that evening, Francisco has a breakdown and cries “I can’t give it up! … Dagny! Help me to remain. To refuse. Even though he’s right! … It’s right, but so hard to do! … I can’t refuse.” (p 114 s 152) To avoid screaming, Dagny asks slowly what he means. Francisco tells her to go to sleep. In the morning she asks when she’ll see him again,

After a year of hearing “nothing from him or about him” Dagny is left in disbelief by the gossip she hears and reads,

Dagny “fought it. She recovered. Years helped her to reach the day when she could face her memories indifferently, then the day when she felt no necessity to face them. It was finished and of no concern to her any longer.” (p 116 s 152) She “had no other men in her life” and instead had the “clean, brilliant sense” of her work. Dagny “won the battle against her memories. But one form of torture remained, untouched by the years, the torture of the word ‘why?’”

Dagny enters Francisco’s hotel room to see him privately for the first time in twelve years. “Hi, Slug!” (p 117 s 152) She answers irresistibly, helplessly, happily, “Hi, Frisco!” Then she continues — “I came here to ask you a question. … When you told those reporters that you came to New York to witness the farce, which farce did you mean?” (p 118 s 152) She is talking about the San Sebastián disaster and continues — now in the “solemn, merciless tone of a prosecutor” — “You did it consciously, cold-bloddedly and with full intention. … You knew the San Sebastián mines were worthless … You knew it before you began the whole wretched business. … You knew, before you brought that property, that Mexico was in the hands of a looters’ government. You didn’t have to start a mining project for them. What you were after is your American stockholders. … I came here because I wanted you to know that I am beginning to understand your purpose. … You had exhausted every other form of depravity and sought a new thrill by swindling people like Jim and his friends, in order to watch them squirm. I don’t know what sort of corruption could make anyone enjoy that, but that’s what you came to New York to see, at the right time. … They’re rotten fools but in this case their only crime was that they trusted you. They trusted your name and your honor. … And you find it amusing?” (p 119-120 s 152) Francisco does not find it amusing. “No. … They knew nothing about making money. They did not think it necessary to learn. They considered knowledge superfluous and judgment inessential. They observed that there I was in the world and that I made it my honor to know. They thought they could trust me honor. One does not betray a trust of this kind, does one?” (p 120 s 152) “Then you did betray it intentionally?” “That’s for you to decide. …

Francisco continues to describe that the $8 million housing settlement he built was just “mainly cardboard” and everything else was built with scrap from “city dumps of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro” (p 123 s 152). None could last more than a few months to a year, except the church — “they’ll need it.” Dagny demands, “You, of all men, you should fight them! … The looters, and those who make world-looting possible. The Mexican planners and their kind.” Francisco responds, “No, my dear. It’s you that I have to fight.” Dagny does not understand.

Dagny takes a moment to recover her eyesight from the blasphemy of what Francisco calls a tribute (p 125 s 152). As she leaves, her eyes lock with Francisco’s — he wants to sleep with her but is “not a man who is happy enough to do it” (p 126 s 152). She admits to wanting to sleep with him as well, causing him to respond, “You have a great deal of courage, Dagny. Some day, you’ll have enough of it.” He fails to clarify of what she’ll have enough.

Non-Contradiction: The Non-Commercial

Rearden is struggling to force his mind into blankness in anticipation of his wife’s party (p 127 s 161). “He felt the leaden approach of that exhaustion which he never felt at his job, the exhaustion that seemed to wait for him and catch him the moment he turned to other concerns. He felt as if he were incapable of any desire except a desperate longing for sleep.” (p 130 s 161)

“He tried to reach for the shirt studs. He saw his hand reaching, instead, for the pile of mail … picked as urgent, it had to be read tonight, but he had had no time to read it in the office.” (p 129, s 161) Rearden encounters a newspaper clipping entitled Equalization of Opportunity,

Rearden makes it downstairs as his wife welcomes guests (p 131 s 161). Seeing Lillian happy makes Rearden smile — “it gave some reasonable justification to the party.” Yet he notices that her usually quiet use of jewelry has been eschewed for an ostentatious overuse of diamonds, except for a Rearden Metal bracelet on her conspicuously bare arms — “he wanted to tear the bracelet off her wrist.”

Dr. Pritchett, head of the Department of Philosophy at Patrick Henry University for the past three years (p 132 s 161), engages Lillian’s guests,

Dr. Pritchett supports the Equalization of Opportunity Bill,

As does Balph Eubank, who furthermore supports applying it to literature such that any book is limited to ten thousand copies,

Betty Pope adds her own view “aggressively, in the tone of an expert on economics” (p 135 s 161).

Bertram Scudder contends that the Equalization of Opportunity Bill is essential when the only thing between destitute masses and goods is a deed — “Property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it. The people can seize it at any moment. If they can, why shouldn’t they?” (p 135 s 161) Bertram Scudder assumes that Philip Rearden opposes the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, as it would “trim a little off the hors d’oeuvres bill around here.”

Claude Slagenhop, the president of Friends of Global Progress, adds his own perspective that “Society is suffering for lack of business opportunities at the moment, so we’ve got the right to seize such opportunities as exist. Right is whatever’s good for society.” (p 135-136 s 161).

Hank Rearden looks at the “flowers, at the sparks of light on the crystal glasses, at the naked arms and shoulders of women” then looks at the “cold wind outside, sweeping empty stretches of land” (p 136 s 161). Rearden smiles until he sees Dagny Taggart enter, who is greeted by Lillian and requests to see Hank.

Dagny and Hank exchange greetings, and after finding herself unaware of Hank’s wedding anniversary, she declares that she only attended the party “as a rest. A celebration of my own — in your honor and mine. … In honor of the first sixty miles of Rearden Metal track.” (p 137-138 s 161). Hank is extremely formal — “she was unable to adjust to it” — and responds “I appreciate it” in the tone proper for “I’ve never heard of it.” A mutually known businessman approaches, “his face an open comment on the change in her appearance … she wished she had seen this look on Rearden’s face, instead” (p 138 s 161). Hank is gone when Dagny looks away from the businessman.

While Rearden moved “among the guests, trying not to be trapped into conversation” a “newspaperman of the seedier sort” pointed Bertram Scudder out to Rearden (p 138 s 161). Rearden immediately locates Lillian and pulls her aside (p 139 s 161). “Is that Scudder of The Future?” “You don’t want to be narrow-minded, do you? You must learn to tolerate the opinions of others and respect their right of free speech.” Rearden is mutely transfixed by mental images of a bucket of slime (“The Octopus”) and Lillian’s profile (the proud purity which he had sought in marrying her). When Rearden notices Lillian again, “he thought that what he saw in her eyes was enjoyment. But in the next instant he reminded himself that he was sane and that this was not possible.” Rearden orders Lillian with “unemotional precision” to never invite Scudder back again — she stays silent, “her smooth cheeks seemed faintly drawn inward, as if deflated” (p 140 s 161).

Francisco d’Anconia entered, causing Rearden to reflect on his own hatred of “the squandered who did not know how to deserve the gift of inherited wealth. There, he thought, was the most contemptible representative of the species.” (p 140 s 161) Francisco passed Dagny without stopping — “she hoped to avoid him for the rest of the evening” — and went on to mingle with Dr. Pritchett and Balph Eubank (p 141 s 161). Dr. Pritchett had just finished enlightening the crowd that “nothing is anything.” When the crowd noted that Francisco is familiar with the philosopher, Francisco exposited that he studied under Dr. Pritchett’s predecessor at Patrick Henry University, Hugh Akston. The crowd was shocked, particularly a woman who remarked that Akston is “one of those great names of . . . of the last century.” “Perhaps in spirit … Not in fact.” “Isn’t it odd? … When a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it.” “They do, eventually.” “Just what did Hugh Akston teach?” (p 142 s 161) “He taught that everything is something.”

James Taggart greeted Francisco and slowly walked away from the crowd — Francisco “followed obediently, but stopped within hearing distance of the others” (p 142 s 161). James remarks he is anxious to speak to Francisco. “You haven’t always been.” James says he has had difficulty reaching Francisco. “Are you trying to hide from me the fact that I refused to see you?” James’ voice rises when he states he wanted to speak about the San Sebastián Mines, “Now, look, Francisco, this is serious. It’s a disaster, an unprecedented disaster. … I don’t understand it at all. I have a right to know.” “A right? Aren’t you being old-fashioned, James?” James wants to know what Francisco is going to do.

James hurries away after declaring “this is outrageous!” — “It’s perfectly outrageous to treat your public responsibilities with such thoughtless levity!” (p 143 s 161)

Franciso approaches Rearden who has “escaped once more to the recess” of a window facing the mines (p 145 s 161) causing the two to meet for the first time (p 140 s 161). Rearden is “brusque and dry” and Francisco openly asks if Rearden wants him to leave; “it was a sudden, startling relief” that a man had named “an issue instead of evading it” (p 145 s 161). Rearden grows contemptuous when Francisco admits to having come to the party only to meet him; “What did you want to meet me for? In order to make me lose money? … What is it this time? A gold mine?” Francisco states that he has no desire to sell Rearden anything, and that “I did not attempt to sell the copper mine to James Taggart, either”; Rearden chuckles because “if you understand that much, we have at least a sensible basis for conversation.”

Rearden is still skeptical and believes Francisco wants to sell him something, yet Francisco declares he just wants “to become acquainted with you.” (p 146 s 161) Rearden believes that at least Francisco wishes to “gain my confidence.” Francisco responds, “If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.” Rearden is startled, emitting a glance like the “involuntary thrust of a hand grasping for support in desperate need” although his face had a hard “inner severity directed at himself; it looked austere and lonely.”

Francisco looks out at the darkness, the “fury of the wind” and the “scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky” (p 146 s 161). He remarks, “It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain … This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.” Rearden notes “as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice” that “Funny … You told me what I was just thinking a while ago … only I didn’t have the words for it.” Francisco continues,

It is not Rearden’s thoughts that Francisco had named, but “his most hidden, most personal emotion” — and Francisco states he said such things “by way of gratitude, Mr. Rearden” (p 147 s 161). Rearden states he does not need gratitude, but that “of all those whom you are saving from the storm tonight, I am the only one who will offer it.” Rearden asks what Francisco is doing, and he states he is “calling your attention to the nature of those for whom you are working.” Rearden feels contempt, but is relieved that he now feels “certain once more” of “his judgment on the character his adversary.” Rearden declares, “You wouldn’t understand it if I told you that hte man who works, works for himself, even if he does have to carry the whole wretched bunch of you along. … A bunch of miserable children who struggle to remain alive, desperately and very badly, while I — I don’t even notice the burden.”

Francisco tells Rearden he should declare to the burdensome people that he is working for “your own sake, not theirs” because “it’s a battle in which one must make one’s stand clear” (p 148 s 161). Rearden states he does not fight the disarmed, but Francisco explains “they have a weapon against you” and that Rearden should ask himself what it is. Rearden asks where there is evidence of Francisco’s claims, causing Francisco to declare, “In the unforgivable fact that you’re as unhappy as you are.” Rearden feels a “stab of coldly rebellious anger” because “the only human reaction which he would not accept was pity.”

Dagny notices Rearden and Francisco talking and is drawn in; “it seemed crucially important that she know what these two men said to each other” (p 149 s 161). Rearden is proclaiming, “I can forgive all those others, they’re not vicious, they’re merely helpless. But you — you’re the kind who can’t be forgiven.” “It is against he sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you.” Dagny “had never thought it possible that she would see Francisco take a beating” — “yet he stood, offering no defense. She knew that it was not indifference; she knew his face well enough to see the effort his calm cost him.” Rearden tosses a few more insults at Francisco before Francisco bows and turns to go. Rearden asks what Francisco could have wanted to learn about him, and Francisco declares “I have learned it” before heading back into the crowd.

Dagny approaches Rearden and asks why there are so many “intellectuals of the looter persuasion here? I wouldn’t have them in my house.” (p 149 s 161) Rearden formally declares he does not care. Dagny explains that “parties are intended to be celebrations, and celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate” (p 150 s 161). Rearden states he “never thought of it.” Dagny is left in disbelief, as “they had always been at ease together” but not “the rigid formality of his manner” makes Rearden seem “like a man in a straight jacket.” Dagny makes a few more remarks about the debasement of parties — “Why have we left it to fools? It should have been ours.” — before walking away. She is unaware that Rearden keeps his sight on her as she approaches the fireplace (p 151 s 161).

Dagny listens to an elderly spinster relate her fear of the dark — “I get the feeling that this time it is final, that daylight will not return” — then mention hearing detonations “somewhere in the fog over the Atlantic … It was Ragnar Danneskjöld. It was the Coast Guard trying to catch him.” (p 151 s 161) This elicits a gasp form the crowd, followed by missives about the rewards offered by People’s State of Norway, PSo Portugal and PSo Turkey for his head — and that last night he seized from a ship the relief supplies meant for the PSo France (p 151-152 s 161).

Dagny notices Francisco d’Anconia near her, watching with stressed curiosity. The group turns begins to philosophize, “Nobody can help what he does, that is the way things made him. There is nothing we can do about anything. We must learn to bear it. … What’s the use anyway? What is man’s fate? Hasn’t it always been to hope, but never to achieve? The wise man is the one who does not attempt to hope.” Dagny brusquely leaves the group upon the mention of “who is John Galt?” is followed by a woman who states “in the soft, mysterious tone of sharing a secret” that she knows who is John Galt (p 153 s 161). Dagny tensely asks who he is, but is merely told a story of how John Galt was “a millionaire, a man of inestimable wealth” who found Atlantis, a place where “hero-spirits lived in a happiness unknown to the rest of the earth.” Dagny offends the woman by offering only “how interesting” as her response, and drives the woman to belligerence upon asking what happened to the the Galt fortune she never heard of (p 154 s 161). The woman remarks “You don’t have to believe it” — Francisco interrupts, offering insolently exaggerated earnestness when he interjects, “Miss Taggart doesn’t … I do.” The woman brusquely departs.

Francisco remarks the story is true but that he doesn’t expect Dagny to believe it (p 154 s 161). Dagny stands defiantly still because the way he looks at her demands “an angry escape.” She keeps the “unfeminine pose of an executive” but this proud strength is betrayed by “the fragility of the body under the black dress” and altogether “the pose made her most truly a woman.” Francisco remarks “Dagny, what a magnificent waste!” and she quickly escapes to avoid letting him see her blush. “She knew suddenly that the sentence named what she had felt all evening” (p 155 s 161).

As Dagny runs away from Francisco she is stopped in her tracks by the opening chords of Halley’s Fourth Concerto coming through a radio (p 155 s 161). But then “the notes broke. It was as if a handful of mud and pebbles had been flung at the music, and what followed was the sound of the rolling and the dripping. It was Halley’s Concerto swung into a popular tune. It was Halley’s melody torn apart, its holes stuffed with hiccoughs. The great statement of joy had become the giggling of a barroom.” Mort Liddy boasts to his friends that this is his score for Heaven’s in Your Backyard.

Dagny shakes with the “approach of an anger she could not control” and thinks: “Say nothing. Walk steadily. Get out.” (p 155 s 161) As she leaves she hears Lillian repeating something she had said throughout the evening, although it is the first time Dagny has heard it. Allowing her Rearden Metal bracelet to be inspected by guests, Lillian declares, “Of course it’s hideous. But don’t you see? It’s supposed to be priceless. … Why? My dear, it’s the first thing ever made of Rearden Metal.” Lillian continues, “Of course, I’d exchange it for a common diamond bracelet any time, but somehow nobody will offer me one for it.” Dagny loses her awareness of everything else in the room, seeing only the bracelet of blue-green metal and feeling only something being torn off her wrist. Extending her own diamond bracelet, Dagny states to Lillian, “If you are not the coward that I think you are, you will exchange it” (p 156 s 161). Lillian looks “straight at her. … Lillian knew that she was serious.” Dagny orders Lillian to “give me that bracelet” and lifts her own glittering diamond band higher.

Lillian exchanges her own bracelet, taking Dagny’s diamond bracelet while Dagny feels “nothing else” except her “fingers closed about the metal” (p 156 s 161). Dagny inexplicably feels a “touch of feminine vanity, the kind she had never experienced before: the desire to be seen wearing this particular ornament.” Indignant voices are in the distance — “the most offensive gesture I’ve ever seen”; “it was vicious”; “this is horrible!”; “Serves her right, if she feels like throwing a few thousand dollars away” — and Rearden has a face that looks as if “something within him were mangled, like the music.” Dagny no longer feels urgently to leave. Rearden is for the rest of the evening by his wife’s side and a “devoted, attentive, admiring husband.” When Dagny apologizes to him and states “I had to do it”, he wants to slap her face but remains expressionless and states, “It was not necessary” (p 157 s 161).

After the party, Rearden spends an hour alone in his room before entering his wife’s bedroom late at night (p 157 s 162). She and her surroundings are a “decorator’s display of a lady groomed for sleep, not to be disturbed.” Rearden is still in his dress clothes, only “his tie was loose, and a strand of hair hung over his face.” She declares it is customary to talk — “If you wish.” — and rattles about household minutiae.

Rearden reflects on his sexual history. He had not known many women, as his dedication had swept aside “everything that did not pertain” to his work (p 158 s 162). Yet occasionally an “access of desire, so violent that it could not be given to a casual encounter” had caused him to surrender on “a few rare occasions” to “women he had thought he liked. He had been left feeling an angry emptiness — because he had sought an act of triumph, though he had not known of what nature, but the response he received was only a woman’s acceptance of a casual pleasure, and he knew too clearly that what he had won had no meaning.”

Rearden met Lillian during one of the “few social occasions to which he was invited by men who sought his favor” (p 158 s 162). She had planned her and Rearden’s meeting, “then faced him coldly, as if not caring that he knew it.” Rearden is attracted to this austerity — she was “obviously pursuing him but with obvious reluctance … as if fighting a desire she resented.” Rearden takes her to his mills one evening, and he notes “a soft, low, breathless tone — the tone of admiration — growing in her voice” (p 159 s 162). What he sees in her eyes when she sees “a heat of steel being poured, was like his own feeling for it made visible to him.” Rearden asks her to marry him that same evening.

It takes only a week of marriage for Rearden’s desire to die — and some time thereafter for him to admit to himself “this was torture” (p 159 s 162). Lillian “had never objected; she had never refused him anything; she submited whenever he wished. She submitted in the manner of complying with the rule that it was, at tie, her duty to become an inanimate object turned over to her husband’s use.” She was “condescendingly tolerant” of what she saw as the “degrading instincts” of a man. What remained for Rearden “was only a need which he was unable to destroy.”

On the evenings Rearden had sex with Lillian, she would set aside a book and “when he lay exhausted, his eyes closed, still breathing in gasps, she would turn on the light, pick up the book and continue her reading” (p 160 s 162). Rearden felt a “dreary, indifferent respect for her. His hatred of his own desire had made him accept the doctrine that women were pure and that a pure woman was one incapable of physical pleasure.” He had never entered a whorehouse — although “the self-loathing he would experience there could be no worse than what he felt when he was driven to enter his wife’s bedroom” — because he wants to protect from dishonor not Lillian, “but the person of his wife.”

This evening, Lillian talks with a “bright, crisp voice” while “polishing her fingernails” (p 160 s 162). She “knew why he had come here” and knew what her actions would do to him. Rearden turns away to avoid seeing her “lacquered chastity” — “what he thought he should feel was respect; what he felt was revulsion.” Rearden wonders why she married him: she had a “driving purpose within her” but nothing to condemn; she kept to her own friends; and she spent little money. “She was a woman of honor in their marriage. She wanted nothing material from him. … What was she after? In the universe as he knew it, there was no answer.” (p 161 s 162) Rearden orders Lillian to not invite who she thinks are his friends to another party because he does not care to meet them socially. Lillian “laughed, startled and pleased” and remarks “I don’t blame you” before Rearden leaves without another word.

Non-Contradiction: The Exploiters and the Exploited

Dagny stands on a bridge whose rails head to Wyatt Oil’s mountainous oil derricks (p 162 s 171) and expository tangents ensue. Dagny notices sparkling Rearden Metal switches. Mr. Mowen, president of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company, had agreed to produce Rearden Metal switches — “it’s never been done before” — only after Rearden agrees to pay for Mowen’s men’s salaries while Rearden metallurgists train them, and Dagny doubles the price of her order (p 163 s 171). Dagny sees the Rearden Metal spikes at her feet. Summit Casting of Illinois had gone bankrupt halfway through delivering the order of spikes; Dagny had “got three lawyers, a judge and a state legislator” out of bed that night with bribes and threats, and before sunrise the plant was been re-opened with a “legality no one would ever be able to untangle.” The sound of drills is a reminder of the rapid degradation of drill heads against the superior strength of Rearden Metal; Associated Steel’s delays to Incorporated Tool meant new drill heads were unattainable, stalling work on the Rio Norte Line (p 164 s 171). Within a day Rearden had bought and re-opened an abandoned old tool plant; after a week, Rearden Metal drill heads were available again. Even the bridge itself that Dagny stands upon was a struggle: it was built under Nat Taggart’s supervision and was too expensive to replace and almost too worthless to repair. Dagny is unable to find an engineer able to devise a “new method of construction” that harnesses the abilities of Rearden Metal. And as a final crisis, the Barton and Jones of Denver catering company serviced the Rio Norte Line personnel but had just gone bankrupt; Dagny had recognized the name in a news item and informed her contractor Ben Nealy to avoid famine (p 165 s 171).

A “tall and young” man in a “workman’s leather jacket” approaches Dagny with an imperious “assurance in the way he walked” (p 165 s 171). He is Ellis Wyatt, and deals Dagny a shock of “forgiveness, understanding, acknowledgement” — a “salute” — by the way he greets her. Dagny laughs “like a child, in happiness that things should be as right as that.” Wyatt proceeds to list RIo Norte Line concerns necessitating attention, things he noticed while making visits to watch the work. When Wyatt leaves and is out of earsight, Ben Nealy remarks that “he thinks he owns the place, doesn’t he? … Your railroad. Or the whole world maybe. That’s what he thinks. … What does he keep hanging around here for? … The snooty show-off.” Without raising her voice, Dagny declares “god damn you” — Nealy “could never knew what had made her say it” but knew “the shocking thing to her was that he was not shocked.” Dagny and Nealy have a meeting, leaving Dagny thereafter “exhausted by two hours of effort to be patient, to instruct, to explain” what needs to maintain construction on the Rio Norte Line.

After her meeting, Dagny notice Rearden’s figure in the distance and runs toward him having lost “all trace of exhaustion” (p 167 s 171). Observing her work ethic, he “half-kidding” offers her a job in his mills if she quits the railroad; she responds, “I think you’d like it — having me ask you for a job. Having me for an employee instead of a customer. Giving me orders to obey.” She responds that she can’t promise him a job, but he laughs and tell her, “Don’t try … to win any battle when I set the terms.” She feels not “an emotion, but a physical sensation of pleasure” from his words but she cannot “name or understand” it. They discuss the “museum piece” bridge and he declares a new Rearden Metal bridge will barely cost more than to make another temporary fix (p 168 s 171). He shows her “a great many figures, a few rough sketches. She understood his scheme before he had finished explaining it.” She acknowledges that Rearden is saving Taggart Transcontinental for the second time — he responds, “Why should I give a damn about saving Taggart Transcontinental? … There are too many people yelping that rails of Rearden Metal are unsafe. So I thought I’d give them something real to yelp about. Let them see a bridge of Rearden Metal.” (p 169 s 171)

Dagny and Rearden feel at ease together, the “strange, light-headed feeling, which included the knowledge that it was the only sense of ease either of them found anywhere — made the thought of hostility impossible. Yet she knew that the party had taken place; he acted as if it had not.” (p 169 s 171) Dagny and Rearden look at the derricks of Wyatt Oil, the wind beating Dagny’s coat again Rearden’s legs and the line of Rearden’s chest felt without touch by Dagny. They discuss the Rearden Metal bridge for Taggart Transcontinental, then Rearden’s plans to buy copper mining property in Colorado — “I don’t want to deal with d’Anconia Copper. I don’t trust that playboy.” (p 170 s 171) Rearden adores Colorado: “There’s no limit to what’s possible in this state. Do you know that they have every kind of natural resource here, waiting, untouched? And the way their factories are growing! I feel ten years younger when I come here.” Dagny feels the opposite upon seeing the same majestic state — “I think of the contrast, all over the Taggart system. There’s less to carry, less tonnage produced each year.” Dagny and Rearden discuss the slow death of the sun mentioned in school — “I remember wondering, then, what it would be like in the last days of the world. I think it would be . . . like this. Growing colder and things stopping.” (p 170-171 s 171) Rearden and Dagny relate that despite the same lesson, they each thought “by the time the sun was exhausted, men would find a substitute.” (p 171 s 171)

Rearden looks at the Taggart Transcontinental rails of Rearden Metal heading up the mounting, and declares: “We’ve done it, haven’t we?” (p 171 s 171) When Dagny states yes it is the moment she wanted “for every effort, for every sleepless night, for ever silent thrust against despair.” Dagny notes Rearden’s car — “I just bought it, on this trip.” — and he remarks he is having it shipped because he flew his own plane to see the Rio Norte Line’s progress. Dagny asks to hitch a ride back to New York with Hank in his plane but his voice develops a “note of abruptness” when he remarks he can’t because he’s headed to Minnesota. Dagny heads to a nearby field after watching Rearden drive away (p 172 s 171). The attendant remarks that the next plane to New York is in two days, and that if she had arrived just earlier — “Mr. Rearden took off for New York, in his private plane, just a little while ago.” Dagny is blank and unmoving — “she had no clue to any reason, nothing to give her a foothold, nothing with which to weigh this or fight it or understand.”

It is January 29^th (p 174 s 172) at seven a.m. when Dagny awakens at her desk; working through the day, Dagny abruptly departs to “rush home and dress, because she had promised Jim to speak at the dinner of the New York Business Council” to present a good case in support of Rearden (p 172 s 172). She and James are stuck in traffic en route to the dinner when James begins to mention the attacks against Rearden Metal from the National Council of Metal Industries: Rearden Metal is “unsound”, “brittle” and “will crack suddenly, without warning” (p 173 s 172). James asks Dagny’s opinion as though “begging for an answer.” She states she has not changed her mind. James lists the credentials of the National Council of Metal Industries experts “as if he were begging her to make him doubt these men and their verdict.”

Dagny reminds James that Orren Boyle is the president of the National Council of Metal Industries, prompting James’ jaw to snap open — “‘If that fat slob thinks he can–’ he started, but stopped and did not finish.” James continues listing various entities that released proclamations against Rearden Metal, although James looks “strangely dejected. She could not understand it: he did not gloat, he did not use the opinions of his favorite authorities against her, he seemed to be pleading for reassurance.” (p 174 s 172) After a long silence, James’ tone reduces to “plain emotion” — the “uncomplicated sound of animal fear.” He asks, “Are we going to have that line built . . . on time?” Dagny responds only, “God help this city, if we don’t!”

James shouts out, “Dan Conway is a bastard! … He refused to sell us the Colorado track of the Phoenix-Durango.” (p 174 s 172) Dagny struggles to keep her “voice flat in order not to scream” when she asks, “You didn’t expect him . . . to sell it . . . to you?” James’ hysterically belligerent manner returns when he cries out that he offered more than anybody else but “the son of a bitch refused. He’s actually declared that not a foot of rail would be sold to Taggart Transcontinental. … He’s selling it piecemeal to any stray comer, to one-horse railroads in Arkansas or North Dakota, selling it at a loss … I think it’s contrary to the intent of the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule … to protect the essential systems, not the jerkwaters of North Dakota.” (p 175 s 172)

Dagny keeps “her head bowed. She could not bear to look at him.” (p 175 s 172) She realizes the reason James Taggart wants Dagny to defend Rearden Metal is because James’ plan for”wonderful publicity” fell through to use the Phoenix-Durango track and theatrically forfeit Rearden Metal in “deference to public opinion.”

James declares that Dagny “better do a good job of defending Rearden Metal, because Bertram Scudder can get pretty sarcastic. … He’s going to be one of the speakers tonight.” (p 175 s 172) “You didn’t tell me there were to be other speakers. … The New York Business Council and you invite Bertram Scudder?” “Why not? Don’t you think he’s smart? He doesn’t have any hard feelings toward businessmen, not really. … You’ll be able to beat him, won’t you?” “. . . to beat him?” “on he air. It’s going to be a radio broadcast. You’re going to debate with him the question: ‘Is Rearden Metal a lethal product of greed?’” Dagny orders the driver to stop the car and is leaving, impervious to James’ hollers, until he seizes her and screams, “But why?” “You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable?”

Dagny is running through the streets until “the blinding anger was gone; she felt nothing but a gray weariness” (p 176 s 172). She is in a seedy neighborhood with the “fog of the East River two blocks away” — in the shadow of a “naked steel skeleton” of a ruined office building is a small diner whose “windows were a bright band of glass and light. She went in.” Running the place is a “husky, elderly man” whose stolid indifference has a “mercifulness that asks no questions.” Dagny orders a cup of coffee, and finds “enjoyment in its warmth” until she sees stamped on a toaster: Marsh, Colorado (p 176-177 s 172). It is a reminder of the “guilt of wasting an evening when she could not afford to waste an hour” (p 172 s 172). A bum begins to trail on, interrupted at times by passive words of agreement or dismissiveness by the other derelicts,

A young boy “watching Dagny with a kind of fierece, purposeless intensity” responds with a “half-chuckle, half-sneer: ‘Who is John Galt?’” (p 178 s 172) Dagny is concerned with nothing except the coffee “reviving the arteries of her body” until a “small, shriveled tramp who wore a cap pulled low over his eyes” tell her “I know who is John Galt … It’s a secret, but I know it.” She asks What? without interest. “The greatest explorer that ever lived. The man who found the fountain of youth…