Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“You don’t want me to answer, Mr. Rearden. You wouldn’t admit to me or to yourself how desperately lonely you are tonight. If you don’t question me, you won’t feel obliged to deny it. Just accept what you do know, anyway: that I know it.”

Taut like a string pulled by anger against the impertinence at one end and by admiration for the frankness at the other, Rearden answered, “I’ll admit it, if you wish. What should it matter to me, that you know it?”

“That I know and care, Mr. Rearden. I’m the only man around you who does.”

“Why should you care? And why should I need your help tonight?”

“Because it’s not easy to have to damn the man who meant most to you.”

“I wouldn’t damn you if you’d only stay away from me.”

Francisco’s eyes widened a little, then he grinned and said, “I was speaking of Mr. Danagger.”

For an instant, Rearden looked as if he wanted to slap his own face, then he laughed softly and said, “All right. Sit down.”

He waited to see what advantage Francisco would take of it now, but Francisco obeyed him in silence, with a smile that had an oddly boyish quality: a look of triumph and gratitude, together.

“I don’t damn Ken Danagger,” said Rearden.

“You don’t?” The two words seemed to fall with a singular emphasis; they were pronounced very quietly, almost cautiously, with no remnant of a smile on Francisco’s face.

“No. I don’t try to prescribe how much a man should have to bear.

If he broke, it’s not for me to judge him.”

“If he broke . . . ?”

“Well, didn’t he?”

Francisco leaned back; his smile returned, but it was not a happy smile. “What will his disappearance do to you?”

“I will just have to work a little harder.”

Francisco looked at a steel bridge traced in black strokes against red steam beyond the window, and said, pointing, “Every one of those girders has a limit to the load it can carry. What’s yours?”

Rearden laughed. “Is that what you’re afraid of? Is that why you came here? Were you afraid I’d break? Did you want to save me, as Dagny Taggart wanted to save Ken Danagger? She tried to reach him in time, but couldn’t.”

“She did? I didn’t know it. Miss Taggart and I disagree about many things.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to vanish. Let them all give up and stop working. I won’t. I don’t know my limit and don’t care. All I have to know is that I can’t be stopped.”

“Any man can be stopped, Mr. Rearden.”

“How?”

“It’s only a matter of knowing man’s motive power.”

“What is it?”

“You ought to know, Mr. Rearden. You’re one of the last moral men left to the world.”

Rearden chuckled in bitter amusement. “I’ve been called just about everything but that. And you’re wrong. You have no idea how wrong.”

“Are you sure?”

“I ought to know. Moral? What on earth made you say it?”

Francisco pointed to the mills beyond the window. “This.”

For a long moment, Rearden looked at him without moving, then asked only, “What do you mean?”

“If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in material form—there it is. Look at it, Mr. Rearden. Every girder of it, every pipe, wire and valve was put there by a choice in answer to the question: right or wrong? You had to choose right and you had to choose the best within your knowledge—the best for your purpose, which was to make steel—and then move on and extend the knowledge, and do better, and still better, with your purpose as your standard of value. You had to act on your own judgment, you had to have the capacity to judge, the courage to stand on the verdict of your mind, and the purest, the most ruthless consecration to the rule of doing right, of doing the best, the utmost best possible to you. Nothing could have made you act against your judgment, and you would have rejected as wrong—as evil—any man who attempted to tell you that the best way to heat a furnace was to fill it with ice. Millions of men, an entire nation, were not able to deter you from producing Rearden Metal—because you had the knowledge of its superlative value and the power which such knowledge gives. But what I wonder about, Mr. Rearden, is why you live by one code of principles when you deal with nature and by another when you deal with men?”

Rearden’s eyes were fixed on him so intently that the question came slowly, as if the effort to pronounce it were a distraction: “What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you hold to the purpose of your life as clearly and rigidly as you hold to the purpose of your mills?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have judged every brick within this place by its value to the goal of making steel. Have you been as strict about the goal which your work and your steel are serving? What do you wish to achieve by giving your life to the making of steel? By what standard of value do you judge your days? For instance, why did you spend ten years of exacting effort to produce Rearden Metal?”

Rearden looked away, the slight, slumping movement of his shoulders like a sigh of release and disappointment. “If you have to ask that, then you wouldn’t understand.”

“If I told you that I understand it, but you don’t—would you throw me out of here?”

“T should have thrown you out of here anyway—so go ahead, tell me what you mean.”

“Are you proud of the rail of the John Galt Line?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the best rail ever made.”

“Why did you make it?”

“In order to make money.”

“There were many easier ways to make money. Why did you choose the hardest?”

“You said it in your speech at Taggart’s wedding: in order to exchange my best effort for the best effort of others.”

“If that was your purpose, have you achieved it?”

A beat of time vanished in a heavy drop of silence. “No,” said Rearden.

“Have you made any money?”

“No.”

“When you strain your energy to its utmost in order to produce the best, do you expect to be rewarded for it or punished?” Rearden did not answer. “By every standard of decency, of honor, of justice known to you—are you convinced that you should have been rewarded for it?”

“Yes,” said Rearden, his voice low.

“Then if you were punished, instead—what sort of code have you accepted?”

Rearden did not answer.

“It is generally assumed,” said Francisco, “that living in a human society makes one’s life much easier and safer than if one were left alone to struggle against nature on a desert island. Now wherever there is a man who needs or uses metal in any way-—Rearden Metal has made his life easier for him. Has it made yours easier for you?”

“No,” said Rearden, his voice low.

“Has it left your life as it was before you produced the Metal?”

“No—” said Rearden, the word breaking off as if he had cut short the thought that followed.

Francisco’s voice lashed at him suddenly, as a command: “Say it!”

“It has made it harder,” said Rearden tonelessly.

“When you felt proud of the rail of the John Galt Line,” said Francisco, the measured rhythm of his voice giving a ruthless clarity to his words, “what sort of men did you think of? Did you want to see that Line used by your equals—by giants of productive energy, such as Ellis Wyatt, whom it would help to reach higher and still higher achievements of their own?”

“Yes,” said Rearden eagerly.

“Did you want to see it used by men who could not equal the power of your mind, but who would equal your moral integrity—men such as Eddie Willers—who could never invent your Metal, but who would do their best, work as hard as you did, live by their own effort, and—riding on your rail—give a moment’s silent thanks to the man who gave them more than they could give him?”

“Yes,” said Rearden gently.

“Did you want to see it used by whining rotters who never rouse themselves to any effort, who do not possess the ability of a filing clerk, but demand the income of a company president, who drift from failure to failure and expect you to pay their bills, who hold their wishing as an equivalent of your work and their need as a higher claim to reward than your effort, who demand that you serve them, who demand that it be the aim of your life to serve them, who demand that your strength be the voiceless, rightless, unpaid, unrewarded slave of their impotence, who proclaim that you are born to serfdom by reason of your genius, while they are born to rule by the grace of incompetence, that yours is only to give, but theirs only to take, that yours is to produce, but theirs to consume, that you are not to be paid, neither in matter nor in spirit, neither by wealth nor by recognition nor by respect nor by gratitude—so that they would ride on your rail and sneer at you and curse you, since they owe you nothing, not even the effort of taking off their hats which you paid for? Would this be what you wanted? Would you feel proud of it?”