Atlas Shrugged – Day 042 – pp. 409-418
And he walks away and leaves her hanging.
What a master of suspense. But there is someone else watching him as he goes.
Hank Rearden.
“It was the muscles of his own face that made Rearden realize the nature of his reaction to Francisco’s arrival: he noticed suddenly that he was smiling. . .”
Going back about 180 or so pages, I think Hank had expressed some admiration for Francisco before. Now he’s having some thoughts about him again. (business stuff!)
“In moments of exhaustion — he had found himself thinking of the only man who had once seemed to be his spokesman. He had pushed the memory aside, telling himself: But that one is worse than all the others! — while feeling certain that this was not true, yet being unable to name the reason of his certainty.”
Hank’s got an inkling. He wants to admire him but instead despises him but doesn’t know why. Hmmmmmmmm.
So he follows Francisco around a bit.
As usual, Francisco attracts a crowd. From the back of the crowd a voice asks, “Senor d’Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?
“Just exactly what it deserves.”
Bertram Scudder interjects:
“Don’t let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil — and he’s the typical product of money.”
And now Francisco, having been smacked with the gauntlet of ignorance decides to explain to these primped and polished and yet still unwashed social masses the real meaning of money. It goes on for 5 incredible pages. I’m only including parts. . .
Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. . . . Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force.
Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor — your claim upon the energy of the men who produce, Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money.
Have you ever looked for the root of production?. . . you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. . . Money is made — before it can not be looted or mooched — made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.
Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. . . . Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss. . . And when men men live by trade — with reason, not force as their final arbiter — it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgement and highest ability — and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward.
But money in only a tool. . . . money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality — the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products to the mind.
Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, . . . will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward or respect for the incompetent.
Only the man who does not need it is fit to inherit wealth — the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. . . . But you look on and cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money?
Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. . . . Then you’ll scream that money is evil.
Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause.
Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. . . . money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.
Run for you life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.
Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich — will not remain rich for long.
But when society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law — men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it.
Do you wish to know know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.
When ever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money. . . .Destroyers seize gold, and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. . . Gold was an objective value . . . Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist. . . . Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs. . . Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: “account overdrawn.”
To the glory on mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money — and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America for this means” a country of reason, justice , freedom, production achievement. For the first time man’s mind and money were set free. . .
Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction.
BRA-FREAKING-VO!!!
And after he’s done, he turns his glance toward Hank. As if the whole spiel was for his benefit and not the unwashed ones. . .
The crowd is suitably appalled and confused. And when in such a state do what they do . . . walk away.
Hank greets Francisco.
I want to speak with you.
To whom do you think I’ve been speaking for the last quarter hour.
Ah ha! I love it when I grasp the obvious.
They exchange words, Hank challenging and admonishing Frisco for his waste of talent. Francisco trying to convince Hank that he’s not just a philandering playboy (without saying so much.)
But Francisco has Hank figured out. . .
“. . . that woman [a guest at his monologue who walked away] and all those like her keep evading the thoughts which they know to be good. You keep pushing out of your mine the thoughts which you believe to be evil. . . .They are willing to bear nothing. You are willing to bear anything. They keep evading responsibility. YOu keep assuming it. But don’t you se that the essential error is the asme? Any refusal to recognize reality,m for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences.”
And then he leaves him with one bit of advice. . .
“Someday you’ll know what treason I”m committing right now, but . . . Don’t ever buy and d’Anconia Coper stock Don’t eve deal with d’Anconia Copper in any way.”
Don’t get more ominous than that. . .