Atlas Shrugged – Day 092 – pp. 982-991
Hank has a solution.
“If it’s production hat you want, the get out of the way, junk all of your damn regulations, let Orren Boyle go broke, let me buy the plant of Associated Steel — and it will be pouring a thousand tons a day from every one of its sixty furnaces.”
Oh, can’t do that. That’d be a monopoly.
“Well then, I’ll offer you another solution. Why don’t you take over my mills and be done with it?”
The jolt shook them with genuine terror.
Why not. It would appear to be the end of the road. The looters have milked every penny from every resource they could. Of course, were it not for John Galt, this looting and plundering could have gone on for considerably longer. But Hank is the only one left. And the stooges are painfully aware.
“We wouldn’t think of it!”
“We stand for free enterprise!”
“We don’t want to harm you!”
But Hank shows them their ultimate stupidity.
“You consider me of invaluable importance to the country?… Yet you propose a plan to destroy me, … that I feed the last of my wealth away until we all starve together. That much irrationality is not possible to any man or any looter. For your own sake — never mind the country’s or mine — you must be counting on something. What?”
I’m wondering. Is it possible that they really don’t understand? How, asks Hank, do they expect him to keep producing steel after he goes bankrupt?
“You won’t go bankrupt. You’ll always produce, … You can’t help it. It’s in your blood.”
And now the light begins to go on for Hank. (I know I’ve said that before. But this time for sure. Rand is using metaphors.)
“…it was as if he had been struggling to find the secret combination of a lock and felt, at those words, a faint click within, of the first tumbril falling into place.”
Strike one?
“What will you do, you and your Peoples Globe, after you’ve finished me? What are you hoping for? What do you see ahead…”
“…you businessmen have kept predicting disasters for years, you’ve cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us that we’ll perish — but we haven’t.”
“…click of the second tumbril connecting the circuits of the lock.”
Strike two.
“There’s no way to make the irrational work. .. What can save you now?”
“Oh, you’ll do something!” cried James Taggart.
“…he felt a deafening crash within him, as of a steel door dropping open at the touch of the final tumbril…”
Strike three – they’re out.
He had cursed the looters for their blindness. Now he realized he was the one who made their crimes possible. (Seriously, didn’t he figure this out before? A couple times?) It wasn’t they who were blind to reality. It had been him. (Again, how many times does he have to figure this thing out?)
Hank gets up to leave. They try to stop him. He pushes them out of the way and goes.
He’s on his way back to his mills. As he’s driving…
“He had never loved his mills as he did in that moment,… the mills were an achievement of his mind, devoted to his enjoyment of existence, erected in a rational world to deal with rational men. … if his mills had ceased to serve his values — then the mills were only a pile of dead scrap, to be left to crumble, the sooner the better…”
But he sees something.
“…a small spurt of flame caught his sudden attention. … abnormal and out of place. … In the next instant he heard the dry crack of a gunshot, then answering cracks in swift succession…”
There’s a riot going on at his mills. Hank sees the crowd.
“…waving arms, some with clubs, some with crowbars, some with rifles…”
A body hits his car. He swerves at 60 mph down a dirt side road slamming on the brake, barely bringing the car to a controlled stop. In his headlights he spots a human hand waving for help.
He runs to help.
“Mr. Rearden…”
It’s the Wet Nurse. He’s been shot.
“I wanted to stop them… I wanted to save you…”
Hank wants to get him to a hospital.
“No! Wait! I… I don’t think I have much time left… that riot… it’s staged … on orders from Washington…”
He spills the beans about the Steel Unification Plan they had at the ready. They were inciting a “peoples rebellion.”
They called him in to a last minute meeting. He had just found out about the plans. A man named Peters from the Unification Board was there. They wanted to bring a bunch of roughnecks in to pretend to be Rearden workers. The WN refused to sign the passes. (Why would they need his signature anyway? Who cares…)
The kid couldn’t help sticking his neck out for Hank. They were trying to break his. The WN couldn’t let that happen. Not to his new mentor.
He ran to find the superintendent. No luck. He ran to call Hank at his home when he heard the fighting break out. He ran to get to his car to go and warn anybody…
“…that’s when they shot me…”
He fell and when he opened his eyes, he was lying on the slag heap.
“On the slag heap?” said Rearden slowly, knowing that the heap was a hundred feet below.
The WN had crawled, up a hill, bleeding trying to send help to Hank.
“Mr. Rearden, is this how it feels to … to want something very much .. very desperately much … and to make it?”
“Yes, kid, that’s how it feels…”
Wow! If that’s not a 180 turnaround… Impressive kid.
The boy’s head dropped back against Rearden’s arm, the eyes closing, the mouth relaxing, as if to hold a moment’s profound contentment.
Hold on kid!! Hank’s gonna save you!
More to come…