The end of Wyatt Oil

Atlas Shrugged – Day 034 – pp. 334-336

She’s standing on the train platform waiting for the mainliner to New York.

Wesley Mouch has been busy in Washington.  She overhears a conversation about it on the platform.

“But laws shouldn’t be passed that way, so quickly.”
“They’re not laws. They’re directives.”
“Then it’s illegal.”
“It’s not illegal, because the Legislature passed a law last month giving him the power to issue directives.”

Don’t like where this is going.

“In a surprise move . . . and in the name of the national emergency. . .”

Let me sum the damages…

Train speeds limited to 60mph, and no more than 60 cars and no more runs than in any neighboring 5 states. . . Steel mills must limit their output. . . manufacturers are forbidden to move their plants anywhere . . .

To compensate railroads for screwing them out of their earnings — They’re gonna screw everybody else!! — they’ve issued a moratorium on “payments of interest and principal on all railroad bonds . . . for a period of five years.” And a special tax was imposed on the state of Colorado (cause they’re the ones with all the money.)

This is going to utterly fuck the John Galt line bond holders. Who are whom? All the big successful industrialists from Colorado. All the ones who were going to make Dagny and Taggart/Galt rich. Suddenly all the cash they’ve handed over to her (Jim) is gone. That’s kind of hard for me to get my head around. Government confiscation of private investments. Make no mistake, it is confiscation.

Anyway, Dagny’s worried about Ellis Wyatt. She has to reach him. She tries to phone him. No answer. She jumps on the number 57 train to Wyatt Junciton to get to him. But while on the way the train makes an unscheduled stop jolting her.

Huh. . .

“The instant before she saw it and her scream cut the voices of the crowd, she knew that she had known that which she was to see. In a break between the mountains, lighting the sky, throwing a glow that swayed on the roofs and walls of the station, the hill of Wyatt Oil was a solid sheet of flame.

Later, when they told her that Ellis Wyatt had vanished, leaving nothing behind but a board he had nailed to a post at the foot of the hill, when she looked at his hadnwriting on the board, she felt as if she had almost know that these would be the words:

“I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It’s yours.”

End of Part I