Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“Well, what’s the matter with the damn thing?” asked the watcher.

“Don’t know.”

“You’ve been at it for an hour.”

“Yeah.”

“How long is it going to take?”

“Who is John Galt?”

Dr. Stadler winced. They had gone past the men, when he said, “I don’t like that expression.”

“I don’t, either,” she answered.

“Where did it come from?”

“Nobody knows.”

They were silent, then he said, “I knew a John Galt once. Only he died long ago.”

“Who was he?”

“I used to think that he was still alive. But now I’m certain that he must have died. He had such a mind that, had he lived, the whole world would have been talking of him by now.”

“But the whole world is talking of him.”

He stopped still. “Yes . . .” he said slowly, staring at a thought that had never struck him before, “yes . . . Why?” The word was heavy with the sound of terror.

“Who was he, Dr. Stadler?”

“Why are they talking of him?”

“Who was he?”

He shook his head with a shudder and said sharply, “It’s just a coincidence. The name is not uncommon at all. It’s a meaningless coincidence. It has no connection with the man I knew. That man is dead.”

He did not permit himself to know the full meaning of the words he added: “He has to be dead.”

* * *

The order that lay on his desk was marked “Confidential . . .

Emergency . . . Priority . . . Essential need certified by office of Top Co-ordinator . . . for the account of Project X”—and demanded that he sell ten thousand tons of Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute.

Rearden read it and glanced up at the superintendent of his mills who stood before him without moving. The superintendent had come in and put the order down on his desk without a word.

“I thought you’d want to see it,” he said, in answer to Rearden’s glance.

Rearden pressed a button, summoning Miss Ives. He handed the order to her and said, “Send this back to wherever it came from. Tell them that I will not sell any Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute.”

Gwen Ives and the superintendent looked at him, at each other and back at him again; what he saw in their eyes was congratulation.

“Yes, Mr. Rearden,” Gwen Ives said formally, taking the slip as if it were any other kind of business paper. She bowed and left the room. The superintendent followed.

Rearden smiled faintly, in greeting to what they felt. He felt nothing about that paper or its possible consequences.

By a sort of inner convulsion—which had been like tearing a plug out to cut off the current of his emotions—he had told himself six months ago: Act first, keep the mills going, feel later. It had made him able to watch dispassionately the working of the Fair Share Law.

Nobody had known how that law was to be observed. First, he had been told that he could not produce Rearden Metal in an amount greater than the tonnage of the best special alloy, other than steel, produced by Orren Boyle. But Orren Boyle’s best special alloy was some cracking mixture that no one cared to buy. Then he had been told that he could produce Rearden Metal in the amount that Orren Boyle could have produced, if he could have produced it. Nobody had known how this was to be determined. Somebody in Washington had announced a figure, naming a number of tons per year, giving no reasons. Everybody had let it go at that.

He had not known how to give every consumer who demanded it an equal share of Rearden Metal. The waiting list of orders could not be filled in three years, even had he been permitted to work at full capacity. New orders were coming in daily. They were not orders any longer, in the old, honorable sense of trade; they were demands. The law provided that he could be sued by any consumer who failed to receive his fair share of Rearden Metal.

Nobody had known how to determine what constituted a fair share of what amount. Then a bright young boy just out of college had been sent to him from Washington, as Deputy Director of Distribution. After many telephone conferences with the capital, the boy announced that customers would get five hundred tons of the Metal each, in the order of the dates of their applications. Nobody had argued against his figure.

There was no way to form an argument; the figure could have been one pound or one million tons, with the same validity. The boy had established an office at the Rearden mills, where four girls took applications for shares of Rearden Metal. At the present rate of the mills’ production, the applications extended well into the next century.

Five hundred tons of Rearden Metal could not provide three miles of rail for Taggart Transcontinental; it could not provide the bracing for one of Ken Danagger’s coal mines. The largest industries, Rearden’s best customers, were denied the use of his Metal. But golf clubs made of Rearden Metal were suddenly appearing on the market, as well as coffee pots, garden tools and bathroom faucets. Ken Danagger, who had seen the value of the Metal and had dared to order it against a fury of public opinion, was not permitted to obtain it; his order had been left unfilled, cut off without warning by the new laws. Mr. Mowen, who had betrayed Taggart Transcontinental in its most dangerous hour, was now making switches of Rearden Metal and selling them to the Atlantic Southern. Rearden looked on, his emotions plugged out.

He turned away, without a word, when anybody mentioned to him what everybody knew: the quick fortunes that were being made on Rearden Metal. “Well, no,” people said in drawing rooms, “you mustn’t call it a black market, because it isn’t, really. Nobody is selling the Metal illegally. They’re just selling their right to it. Not selling really, just pooling their shares.” He did not want to know the insect intricacy of the deals through which the “shares” were sold and pooled—nor how a manufacturer in Virginia had produced, in two months, five thousand tons of castings made of Rearden Metal—nor what man in Washington was that manufacturer’s unlisted partner.

He knew that their profit on a ton of Rearden Metal was five times larger than his own. He said nothing. Everybody had a right to the Metal, except himself.

The young boy from Washington—whom the steel workers had nicknamed the Wet Nurse—hung around Rearden with a primitive, astonished curiosity which, incredibly, was a form of admiration. Rearden watched him with disgusted amusement. The boy had no inkling of any concept of morality; it had been bred out of him by his college; this had left him an odd frankness, naive and cynical at once, like the innocence of a savage.

“You despise me, Mr. Rearden,” he had declared once, suddenly and without any resentment. “That’s impractical.”

“Why is it impractical?” Rearden had asked.

The boy had looked puzzled and had found no answer. He never had an answer to any “why?” He spoke in flat assertions. He would say about people, “He’s old-fashioned,” “He’s unreconstructed,” “He’s unadjusted,” without hesitation or explanation; he would also say, while being a graduate in metallurgy, “Iron smelting, I think, seems to require a high temperature.” He uttered nothing but uncertain opinions about physical nature—and nothing but categorical imperatives about men.

“Mr. Rearden,” he had said once, “if you feel you’d like to hand out more of the Metal to friends of yours—I mean, in bigger hauls—it could be arranged, you know. Why don’t we apply for a special permission on the ground of essential need? I’ve got a few friends in Washington. Your friends are pretty important people, big businessmen, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get away with the essential need dodge. Of course, there would be a few expenses. For things in Washington, You know how it is, things always occasion expenses.”

“What things?”

“You understand what I mean.”

“No,” Rearden had said, “I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

The boy had looked at him uncertainly, weighed it in his mind, then come out with: “It’s bad psychology.”

“What is?”

“You know, Mr. Rearden, it’s not necessary to use such words as that.”

“As what?”

“Words are relative. They’re only symbols. If we don’t use ugly symbols, we won’t have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say things one way, when I’ve already said them another?”

“Which way do I want you to say them?”

“Why do you want me to?”

“For the same reason that you don’t.”

The boy had remained silent for a moment, then had said, “You know, Mr. Rearden, there are no absolute standards. We can’t go by rigid principles, we’ve got to be flexible, we’ve got to adjust to the reality of the day and act on the expediency of the moment.”