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The looters’ secret need

Atlas Shrugged – Day 038 – pp. 369-378

While she’s waiting she recalls all the incredible gifts he’s given her. . .

“The single pear shaped ruby that spurted a violent fire on the white satin of the jeweler’s box. It was a famous stone which only a dozen men in the world could properly afford to purchase; he was not one of them.”

“On the evening of a blizzard, she came home to find an enormous spread of tropical flowers standing in he living room against the dark glass of windows battered by snowflakes.”

“. . .he brought and put over her shoulders was a cape of blue fox that swallowed her from the curve of her chin to the tips of her sandals.”

Out for a secluded dinner one evening, he again confesses what he believes to be his sin.

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One step from victory. . .

Atlas Shrugged – Day 033 – pp. 324-333

As Dagny gets ready to leave, Ivy is babbling on about how she never concerned herself with the things in the lab. But she does remember the Chief of the lab’s name.

“William Hastings. That was his name — William Hastings. I remember. He went off to Brandon, Wyoming. He quit the day after we introduced the plan. He was the second man to quit us . . . No, No, I don’t remember who was the first. He wasn’t anybody importnat.”

The guy possibly overseeing the building of a revolutionary motor not sticking around for a socialist ass-whuppin’. Go figure. But he was not the first. Who was? Maybe the guy inventing the motor? No one important?

But it’s off to Wyoming.

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A Hunsacker and two Starnes

Atlas Shrugged – Day 032 – pp. 314-323

Lee Hunsacker. . . Wasn’t that that one guy’s name in the first Lethal Weapon?  (imdb?  Michael Hunsacker!)

Whatever, this Lee Hunsacker is a fucking nut. First words:

“I never had a chance.”

By now we can always tell where this is going. Just down some variation of the “I’m owed” path. Let’s see which fork Lee takes.

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Tracking the motor

Atlas Shrugged – Day 030 – pp. 294-303

Chapter X — Wyatt’s Torch

They’re going to find the person who built that motor. Won’t be easy. First they have to find out about the owner of the factory. So they start at the hall of records. . .

“Nobody knows who owns that factory now. I guess nobody will ever know it. . .”

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The discovery

Atlas Shrugged – Day 029 – pp. 284-293

They’ve stumbled into what happens when industry fails. What happens when the businesses that provide people their livelihood close their doors.

“Through the open door, they could see the interior of her house. There was useless gas stove, its oven stuffed with rage, serving as a chest of drawers. There was a stove built of stones in a corner, with a few logs burning under an old kettle, and long streaks of soot rising up the wall. A white object lay propped against the legs of a table. It was a porcelain washbowl, torn from the wall of some bathroom, filled with wilted cabbages . . . A brood of ragged children had gathered at the door behind the woman, silently, one by one.”

A man comes up carrying water from the local well.

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Road trip

Atlas Shrugged – Day 028 – pp. 274-283

“Owen Kellogg.”

It’s the kid with all the promise Dagny wanted to make manager of the midwest region. The one who quit and dropped off the face of the earth so mysteriously. Doing transient labor now?

“Listen Kellogg, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”

“You wouldn’t care to know.”

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A good day gets better

Atlas Shrugged – Day 025 – pp. 244-253

OK the train is hurtling on. And as it blows past everything at 100 mph, Rand describes Dagny’s feelings of exhilaration. Her sense of triumph blends into the scenes Rand paints of land and skyscapes flashing by.

I’d say Dagny is having a good day.

Now combine all that adrenaline with Hank in the engine cab. . .

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Launching the John Galt Line

Atlas Shrugged – Day 024 – pp. 234-243

She invites Hank to the press conference for good measure.

“Dagny recited the technological facts abot the John Galt Line, giving exact figures on the nature of the rail, the capacity of the bridge, the method of construction, the costs. . . . That is all,” she said

Of course the press want some sort of “message for the public.” Some “defense of themselves” in what they’re doing. A sound bite to “justify her line.”

“Aren’t you going to tell us your motive for building that Line?”

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Blind public sentiment and clear business will

Atlas Shrugged – Day 023 – pp. 224-233

Hank envisions Paul Larkin as a young man of 18. . .

“And he saw what Paul Larkin must have been at that time — a youth with an aged baby’s face, smiling ingratiatingly, joylessly, begging to be spared, pleading with the universe to give him a chance. If someone had shown that youth to the Hank Rearden of that time and told him that this was to be the goal of his steps, the collector of the energy of his aching tendons, what would he have–
Rearden knew what the boy he had been would have felt: a desire to step on the obscene thing which was Larkin and grind every wet bit of it out of existence. . .

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The two non-followers

Atlas Shrugged – Day 018 – pp. 174-183

And what about the school teachers in New Mexico? It’s their opinion that children should not be permitted to ride on trains running on Rearden Metal.

It seems that public outrage has hit some kind of fever pitch.

I want to just pause here for a sec and think about a couple parallels I can see, as Rand describes the events.

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Everything’s made of Rearden Metal

Atlas Shrugged – Day 017 – pp. 164-173

Gittin’ ‘er done…

Let’s see, the new contractor Ben Nealy’s an oaf… (Jeez, even I’m not this cynical…)

“I couldn’t help it Miss Taggart,… You know how fast drill heads wear out. I had them on order, but Incorporated Tools ran into a little trouble, they couldn’t help it either, Associated Steel was delayed in delivering the steel to them, so there’s nothing we can do but wait. It’s no use getting upset, Miss Taggart. I’m doing my best.”
“I’ve hired you to do a job, not to do your best — whatever that is.”
“That’s a funny thing to say. That’s an unpopular attitude, Miss Taggart, mighty unpopular.”

Need drill heads?

“She had telephoned Rearden. He had found an abandoned tool plant, long since out of business. Within an hour, he had purchased it from the relatives of its last owner. Within a day, the plant had been reopened. Withing a week, drill heads of Rearden Metal had been delivered to the bridge in Colorado.”

Oh, come on!!!

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