It is January 29th (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…
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).
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,
She read the story of the party he gave on his yacht, in the harbor of Valparaiso; the guests wore bathing suits, and an artificial rain of champagne and flower petals kept falling upon the decks throughout the night.
She read the story of the party he gave at an Algerian desert resort; he built a pavilion of thin sheets of ice and presented every woman guest with an ermine wrap, as a gift to be worn for the occasion, on the condition that they remove their wraps, then their evening gowns, then all the rest, in tempo with the melting of the walls.
She read the accounts of the business ventures he undertook at lengthy intervals; the ventures were spectacularly successful and ruined his competitors, but he indulged in them as in an occasional sport, staging a sudden raid, then vanishing from the industrial scene for a year or two, leaving d’Anconia Copper to the management of his employees.
…
She saw him once, at a reception given by an ambassador in New York. He bowed to her courteously, he smiled, and he looked at her with a glance in which no past existed. She drew him aside. She said only, “Francisco, why?” “Why — what?” he asked. She turned away. “I warned you,” he said. She did not try to see him again. (p 116 s 152)
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.
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).
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 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.”
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.”
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.
| 1st Name | Surname | Role | Born | Overview |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| John | Galt | |||
| Eddie | Wilers | Eddie Wilers is Taggart Transcontinental’s Special Assistant to the Vice-President in Charge of Operation (Dagny Taggart) (p 18). Wilers was 32 years old at the start of Atlas Shrugged (p 3). His “eyes were blue, wide and unquestioning; he had blond hair and a square face, unremarkable except for that look of unscrupulous attentiveness and open, puzzled wonder.” (p 8) “He had spent most of his childhood with the Taggart children, and now he worked for them [like his father and grandfather]” (p. 5) Eddie’s “lonely apartment indicates that he was single (p 5). “What Taggart disliked about Eddie Wilers was this habit of looking straight into people’s eyes.” (p 7) |
||
| Robert | Stadler | |||
| Floyd | Ferris | |||
| James | Taggart | “He looked like a man approaching fifty … He was thirty-nine years old.” (p. 7) “Don’t bother me, don’t bother me, don’t bother me … .” (p. 7) | ||
| Orren | Boyle | First introduced on p 8 amidst James Taggart and Eddie Wilers’ meeting. | ||
| Ellis | Wyatt | Ellis Wyatt “was thirty-three years old and had a violent temper.” (p 9-10) Wyatt “had discovered some way to revive exhausted oil wells” (p 10), allowing him to give “a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the mountain” (p 9) to a “rocky patch in the mountains of Colorado” (p 9) with “dying oil wells” (p 9). The oil fields brought “new towns, new power plants, new factories to a region nobody had every noticed” within just 8 years, in a time “when pumps were stopping in one famous field after another” (p 9). | ||
| Henry | Rearden | |||
| Pop | Harper | The chief clerk among James Taggart’s personal staff (p 11). Had a “blank, emaciated face and white hair” (p 12) and the “cynical indifference which Eddie Wilers had seen in the eyes of the bum on the street corner” (p 11). Harper’s brief monologue (p 12) is reminiscent of We the Living’s method of communicating the destitution of Soviet Russia. | ||
| Dagny | Taggart | Taggart is the Vice-President in Charge of Operation of Taggart Transcontinental (p 17). She is introduced while taking the Taggart Comet overnight (p 12) to New York (p 14) from Cleveland (p 19), where she had phoned Hank Rearden to order the steel needed for the Rio Norte Line. | ||
| Brakeman | The Taggart Comet’s “blonde and young” brakeman is adjusting an air conditioner on the Taggart Comet when he is introduced to the reader; Dagny Taggart is mystified when she overhears him whistling RIchard Halley’s unpublished Fifth Concerto (p 13-14). | |||
| Richard | Halley | |||
| Ayers | President of the Ayers Music Publishing Company, which has published all of Richard Halley’s work (p 24). | |||
| Owen | Kellogg | |||
| Lillian | Rearden | |||
| Philip | Rearden | |||
| Mother | Rearden | |||
| Paul | Larkin | |||
| Ives | ||||
| Wesley | Mouch | |||
