“Oh yes, of course, the construction is moving on schedule,” said James Taggart, shrugging, to his Board of Directors. “Oh yes, you may feel full confidence. My dear sister does not happen to be a human being, but just an internal combustion engine, so one must not wonder at her success.”
When James Taggart heard a rumor that some bridge girders had split and crashed, killing three workmen, he leaped to his feet and ran to his secretary’s office, ordering him to call Colorado. He waited, pressed against the secretary’s desk, as if seeking protection; his eyes had the unfocused look of panic. Yet his mouth moved suddenly into almost a smile and he said, “I’d give anything to see Henry Rearden’s face right now.” When he heard that the rumor was false, he said, “Thank God!”
But his voice had a note of disappointment.
“Oh well!” said Philip Rearden to his friends, hearing the same rumor. “Maybe he can fail, too, once in a while. Maybe my great brother isn’t as great as he thinks.”
“Darling,” said Lillian Rearden to her husband, “I fought for you yesterday, at a tea where the women were saying that Dagny Taggart is your mistress. . . . Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t look at me like that!
I know it’s preposterous and I gave them hell for it. It’s just that those silly bitches can’t imagine any other reason why a woman would take such a stand against everybody for the sake of your Metal. Of course, I know better than that. I know that the Taggart woman is perfectly sexless and doesn’t give a damn about you—and, darling, I know that if you ever had the courage for anything of the sort, which you haven’t, you wouldn’t go for an adding machine in tailored suits, you’d go for some blond, feminine chorus girl who—oh, but Henry, I’m only joking!
—don’t look at me like that!”
“Dagny,” James Taggart said miserably, “what’s going to happen to us? Taggart Transcontinental has become so unpopular!”
Dagny laughed, in enjoyment of the moment, any moment, as if the undercurrent of enjoyment was constant within her and little was needed to tap it. She laughed easily, her mouth relaxed and open. Her teeth were very white against her sun-scorched face. Her eyes had the look, acquired in open country, of being set for great distances. On her last few visits to New York, he had noticed that she looked at him as if she did not see him.
“What are we going to do? The public is so overwhelmingly against us!”
“Jim, do you remember the story they tell about Nat Taggart? He said that he envied only one of his competitors, the one who said The public be damned!’ He wished he had said it.”
In the summer days and in the heavy stillness of the evenings of the city, there were moments when a lonely man or woman—on a park bench, on a street corner, at an open window—would see in a newspaper a brief mention of the progress of the John Galt Line, and would look at the city with a sudden stab of hope. They were the very young, who felt that it was the kind of event they longed to see happening in the world—or the very old, who had seen a world in which such events did happen. They did not care about railroads, they knew nothing about business, they knew only that someone was fighting against great odds and winning. They did not admire the fighters’ purpose, they believed the voices of public opinion—and yet, when they read that the Line was growing, they felt a moment’s sparkle and wondered why it made their own problems seem easier.
Silently, unknown to everyone except to the freight yard of Taggart Transcontinental in Cheyenne and the office of the John Galt Line in the dark alley, freight was rolling in and orders for cars were piling up—for the first train to run on the John Galt Line. Dagny Taggart had announced that the first train would be, not a passenger express loaded with celebrities and politicians, as was the custom, but a freight special.
The freight came from farms, from lumber yards, from mines all over the country, from distant places whose last means of survival were the new factories of Colorado. No one wrote about these shippers, because they were men who were not disinterested.
The Phoenix-Durango Railroad was to close on July 25. The first train of the John Galt Line was to run on July 22.
“Well, it’s like this, Miss Taggart,” said the delegate of the Union of Locomotive Engineers. “I don’t think we’re going to allow you to run that train.”
Dagny sat at her battered desk, against the blotched wall of her office.
She said, without moving, “Get out of here.”
It was a sentence the man had never heard in the polished offices of railroad executives. He looked bewildered. “I came to tell you—”
“If you have anything to say to me, start over again.”
“What?”
“Don’t tell me what you’re going to allow me to do.”
“Well, I meant we’re not going to allow our men to run your train.”
“That’s different.”
“Well, that’s what we’ve decided.”
“Who’s decided it?”
“The committee. What you’re doing is a violation of human rights.
You can’t force men to go out to get killed—when that bridge collapses —just to make money for you.”
She reached for a sheet of blank paper and handed it to him. “Put it down in writing,” she said, “and we’ll sign a contract to that effect.”
“What contract?”
“That no member of your union will ever be employed to run an engine on the John Galt Line.”
“Why . . . wait a minute . . . I haven’t said—”
“You don’t want to sign such a contract?”
-No, I—”
“Why not, since you know that the bridge is going to collapse?”
“I only want—”
“I know what you want. You want a stranglehold on your men by means of the jobs which I give them—and on me, by means of your men. You want me to provide the jobs, and you want to make it impossible for me to have any jobs to provide. Now I’ll give you a choice.
That train is going to be run. You have no choice about that. But you can choose whether it’s going to be run by one of your men or not. If you choose not to let them, the train will still run, if I have to drive the engine myself. Then, if the bridge collapses, there won’t be any railroad left in existence, anyway. But if it doesn’t collapse, no member of your union will ever get a job on the John Galt Line. If you think that I need your men more than they need me, choose accordingly. If you know that I can run an engine, but they can’t build a railroad, choose according to that. Now are you going to forbid your men to run that train?”
“I didn’t say we’d forbid it. I haven’t said anything about forbidding.
But . . . but you can’t force men to risk their lives on something nobody’s ever tried before.”
“I’m not going to force anyone to take that run.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to ask for a volunteer.”
“And if none of them volunteers?”
“Then it will be my problem, not yours.”
“Well, let me tell you that I’m going to advise them to refuse.”
“Go ahead. Advise them anything you wish. Tell them whatever, you like. But leave the choice to them. Don’t try to forbid it.”
The notice that appeared in every roundhouse of the Taggart system was signed “Edwin Willers, Vice-President in Charge of Operation.” It asked engineers, who were willing to drive the first train on the John Galt Line, so to inform the office of Mr. Willers., not later than eleven A.M. of July 15.
It was a quarter of eleven, on the morning of the fifteenth, when the telephone rang in her office. It was Eddie, calling from high up in the Taggart Building outside her window. “Dagny, I think you’d better come over.” His voice sounded queer.
She hurried across the street, then down the marble-floored halls, to the door that still carried the name “Dagny Taggart” on its glass panel.
She pulled the door open.
The anteroom of the office was full. Men stood jammed among the desks, against the walls. As she entered, they took their hats off in sudden silence. She saw the graying heads, the muscular shoulders, she saw the smiling faces of her staff at their desks and the face of Eddie Willers at the end of the room. Everybody knew that nothing had to be said.
Eddie stood by the open door of her office. The crowd parted to let her approach him. He moved his hand, pointing at the room, then at a pile of letters and telegrams.