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.”
| 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 | |||
