Posted on 03/07/2009 7:48:34 AM PST by Publius
Synopsis
Eddie Willers talks with the Anonymous Rail Worker in the corporate cafeteria, bringing him up to date. Dagny’s work on the John Galt Line is going so well the newspapers refuse to report it. The United Locomotive Works has gone bankrupt, and Dwight Sanders of Colorado has bought the plant. Dagny has moved into a little office near the back of Taggart Terminal, and Eddie feels badly about sitting in Dagny’s chair and taking credit for her work.
The office of the John Galt Line is on the ground floor of a half-collapsed building and is strictly a no-frills operation. Dagny is in town because she had rushed to New York upon hearing that Dwight Sanders had retired – and there was no trace of him to be found. In her office, an exhausted Dagny permits herself a small moment of weakness, longing for a man who can share her meaning of the world. Outside she sees the shadow of a man lingering near the door – but he leaves. Dagny rushes outside but sees only the rear entrance to Taggart Terminal. (No spoilers, please!)
Hank Rearden sells his ore mines to Paul Larkin to get around the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. Paul is consumed with guilt, and Hank is not interested in Paul’s rationalizations. Hank had earlier sold his coal mines to Ken Danagger, who was willing to sell his coal to Rearden at cost, even though that was illegal. Hank’s concern was not cost; he simply wanted to be the first to get the coal.
Wesley Mouch retires from Rearden’s employ to become the Assistant Coordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources.
Hank and Eddie Willers have breakfast at the Wayne-Falkland. With the railroad in such poor financial shape, Hank wants to give Eddie a moratorium on the first payment for Rearden Metal; from his perspective it’s just good business. Eddie is shocked but takes the offer, feeling badly that this will help Jim Taggart and his friends. Hank says not to worry about them.
The American people are worried about whether the Rearden Metal bridge will stand, and they curse Hank Rearden amd Dagny Taggart for caring about nothing but money. Simon Pritchett, Claude Slagenhop, Orren Boyle and Bertram Scudder are all fueling the chorus of public opinion while claiming that it arises spontaneously. Balph Eubank and Mort Liddy are the first signers of a petition from the Committee of Disinterested Citizens asking for a government study of the line before it can open.
But Dagny is thrilled. A union boss announces that he is not going to let his men run a train on her tracks, and Dagny throws him out of her office after giving him an ultimatum. Every engineer on the Taggart Transcontinental volunteers to run the first train. Pat Logan, engineer of the Taggart Comet on the Nebraska Division, gets the “demotion” to freight. Dagny is going to ride in the cab.
At the press conference, Dagny, with Hank in attendance, gives the media the details of the opening of the John Galt Line. She and Hank make it clear that their motive is profit, much to the discomfiture of the press. The first train will be a 4-locomotive mixed freight of 80 cars running the entire way at 100 mph. Hank volunteers to ride in the cab with Dagny and the crew.
Everything goes perfectly; in fact, the whole trip is a natural high. At 100 mph, the train streaks through the countryside and right through the Denver yards and station. It roars across the Rearden Metal bridge and comes to a halt at Wyatt Junction. Ellis Wyatt is positively giddy; he takes Hank and Dagny off in his convertible to his home. Over dinner, Wyatt tells them he is planning to extract oil from shale only five miles away in a magnitude previously unheard of. Hank, Dagny and Wyatt make great plans.
As they head for separate bedrooms, Hank pulls Dagny into his arms and kisses her brutally. Then he takes her into his bedroom and makes wild, hot, passionate love to her.
The Issue of Rail Speed Limits
At the time of the publication of the book, railroads were entirely responsible for speed limits on their tracks. A 1910 law, most recently upheld in 1996, refused permission for towns to restrict train speeds.
On the John Galt Line, blocks were two miles long. In the real world of railroading, blocks are of variable length. Each block begins with a signal tower that conveys the condition of the block by a red, yellow or green signal. In the earliest days, large balls on a pole were used, which is where the term “highball” comes from. Later came semaphores, and when the Pennsylvania Railroad switched to light signals, the lights mimicked the positions of a semaphore. There is no standardization of block signals in America today; each railroad has its own unique customs.
A railroad engineer is issued a booklet with each block on the line listed by milepost and with its designated speed limit. Railroads also use speed limit signs that are often coded separately for freight and passenger trains. The speed limit on a given block is determined by factors such as curvature of the rail and the number of grade crossings. Rail yards have much lower speed limits unless the yard possesses a separate bypass track.
As recently as the Fifties, a dispatcher might radio an engineer and say, “You own the railroad tonight.” This was a signal for the engineer to use his own judgment on following the posted speed limits. Today every rail line has track-side sensors, and every train has a FRED Unit (“friendly rear-end device”) where the caboose used to be. These tools gather data and use telemetry to pass it to the dispatcher. Thanks to these innovations, engineers with a heavy hand on the throttle are a thing of the past.
The Federal Railroad Administration now sets maximum speed limits on America’s railroads. The maximum speed for freight trains is 70 mph, and for passenger trains it’s 79 mph. Passenger trains on certain types of track with in-cab signals are permitted to go 110 mph, and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor has its own speed limits with sections rated at 120 to 150 mph.
It is obvious that turning the Rio Norte Line into the John Galt Line involved a complete re-engineering. The first freight train runs at 100 mph around curves and grades, which would imply a total rebuild. (That train today would have been restricted to 70 mph.) It even runs through heavily populated Denver and the Denver station and yards at 100 mph, which today is an absolute no-no.
What is even more interesting is that the ride was smooth and quiet with jointed rail; welded rail hadn’t been invented yet. I often wonder if Rand didn’t anticipate the invention of welded rail decades in advance.
The Disappearance of the Adversarial Press
Traditionally, the American press was highly adversarial. Every town had a Democratic newspaper and a Republican newspaper, and there was no line separating news from editorial content. You read the paper that reflected your political bias.
After World War II, however, that changed. Thanks to media consolidation, eight companies today control most books, newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio stations and movie studios. Because of this, the mass market reflects a bland, corporatist, internationalist liberalism, quite different from the muscular liberalism that shaped America in the 20th Century. This is the liberalism of the intellectual, not the lunch bucket. This bland liberalism defines itself as “the American Center”.
In the Sixties, younger journalists became the avatars of advocacy journalism, in which Radical Leftist opinion was marketed as bland liberalism. Over time, advocacy journalism became the norm and today dominates the media.
Some Discussion Topics
Yes. I should also have added that when there are those splashes of color, there's generally only one, and it's a vivid primary color. Again... like an illustration painted to draw the eye to one thing.
An exhausted, gray city inhabited by black-and-white people with only every now and then a flash of a bright red dress and all the heads turn.
“How about just coming to the threads and reading Publius’ summary of the chapter? That way you get the gist of AS, can join in the discussion, and don’t have to read it actually unless you chose to.”
I’m already up to Chapter 2 of A is A (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for those of you who aren’t that far yet), and I use Publius’s synopsis as a review. It’s also helpful because I haven’t been very consistent in my reading habits lately. I read Ch.1 of A is A and then didn’t pick up the book again for almost two weeks.
Guten Tag!
A couple of things stood out to me in this chapter:
When Dagney says to herself while working late and being alone, “This is not the world I expected”. How many of us will be saying that pretty soon? Or have been saying it now? Thank goodness we have FR to talk to like-minded people to stave off the mental loneliness that Dagney was feeling.
What about crime? That same scene, with alleys, half-demolished buildings, late at night, her being alone and seeing a stranger loiter by her doorway - in todays’ world, it could be a dangerous situation. Yet, she felt no fear and even went after the stranger. Perhaps with everone’s needs met, they had no need for crime. But I don’t think that fits in with human nature - everyone wants more, more, more.
The government loans for 2/3 of the money for buying businesses for owners who “have never had a chance”. Sounds a lot like recent events of banks being forced to give loans to people who cannot repay them.
Lastly, the part about Hank Rearden being a greedy monster because he made money and supposedly didn’t help anyone hit home. I recently had an acquaintance (ie., a liberal I’ve known for years but wouldn’t call a friend) lambast CEOs and how much they made. Envy rears its ugly head again - but only for those employed in capitalistic endeavors. When asked about those employed in Hollywood or athletes that probably make more than most CEOs, he had no class envy for them. I pointed out that Hollywood is doing more to promote immorality than CEOs and many athletes using drugs are poor role models for our kids - he didn’t care about that. Only the CEOs are “evil”.
That’s another reason Publius’ summaries should be encapsulated together!
BTW, is it just me? When trying to find old threads on AS, I don’t have much luck. What keywords work?
Thank you! This is so great. I had meant to read this for YEARS, sheepish look, and now, with thanks to you, I am! AND enjoying the discussion, and all manner of insights that enrich the experience :)
Tatt
“Her characters also seem to be 2 dimensional. I don’t know if it’s poor writing (going to get flamed here for that!) or brilliant writing that sets the tone perfectly.”
Perhaps Rand saw her characters as secondary to the setting? Or perhaps she simply fleshed out the characters sufficiently to serve the point she wanted to make?
I just did a search on “atlas shrugged” and it brought up all the Book Club threads (plus a lot of others!).
Bump
I may do that, I was tempted to read the Cliff Notes
This is indicative of how the press operates today, and indeed has operated for quite some time. They, the press in AS, condemn without actually condemning, they slam without slamming, they instill fear in the public without actually instilling it; They leave themselves "plausible deniability" by, if they were to actually be confronted with their statements, saying they never actually said it wouldn't work. But in the end, it's an attempt to sabotage the work. You know what they implied and meant, I know what they implied and meant, THEY know what they implied and meant, but they never actually said it, therefore, it was never meant. (Whew, trying to follow liberal logic will make your head spin).
In addition to this travesty, which I admit has existed in internal corporate politics ever since corporations have been around, it's unforgivable, IMO, for the press to NOT question what they mean, exactly, by the statements they make. By simply glossing over facts and giving credence to those making the statement, they are in fact endorsing the (non)opinion that the operation won't succeed and therefore should be avoided by investment or enthusiasm. To compound this, many "disinterested parties", who have (non)condemned this project in fact seek to profit from it. "Mr. Mowen bought stock in the name of his sister. Ben Nealy bought it in the name of a cousin. Paul Larkin bought it under an alias."
To put this into todays perspective, witness the attempted character assassination of John McCain and his supposed affair in which the press never actually said he had one, but the picture was perfectly painted to let the reader assume it had. When confronted, members of the press used as their defense, "We never actually said it happened."
The one section of the chapter that almost literally had me cheering was Dagny's putdown of the union thug. That short section had me smiling in a big time way..
On each thread, at ping time, I post links to earlier threads on the book. They’re right there in plain sight.
All the criminals were in government or tied to government.
I was talking about when I do a search during the week to try to find an AS thread, none of the keywords I try works.
I guess I have to do the entire title. I was just putting in ‘atlas’ to safe some typing
ps. thanks!
If your check your prior “Pings” you’ll find everything you’ve done for years. The Atlas Shrugged threads will show up there.
I have way too many pings to go through each page, though. I was looking for an easier, quick way.
Using the entire title seems to work on some weeks’ threads, though. Weird that it’s not for all.
Maybe it's the questioning voice in our heads that she managed to extract and put to print?
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