Atlas Shrugged (11 page)

“When everybody agrees,” Taggart’s voice suddenly went shrill, “when people are unanimous, how does one man dare to dissent? By what right? That’s what I want to know—by what right?”

Boyle’s eyes darted to Taggart’s face, but the dim light of the room made it impossible to see faces clearly: he saw only a pale, bluish smear.

“When we think of the natural resources, at a time of critical shortage,” Boyle said softly, “when we think of the crucial raw materials that are being wasted on an irresponsible private experiment, when we think of the ore ...”

He did not finish. He glanced at Taggart again. But Taggart seemed to know that Boyle was waiting and to find the silence enjoyable.

“The public has a vital stake in natural resources, Jim, such as iron ore. The public can’t remain indifferent to reckless, selfish waste by an anti-social individual. After all, private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society as a whole.”

Taggart glanced at Boyle and smiled; the smile was pointed, it seemed to say that something in his words was an answer to something in the words of Boyle. “The liquor they serve here is swill. I suppose that’s the price we have to pay for not being crowded by all kinds of rabble. But I do wish they’d recognize that they’re dealing with experts. Since I hold the purse strings, I expect to get my money’s worth and at my pleasure.”

Boyle did not answer; his face had become sullen. “Listen, Jim ...” he began heavily.

Taggart smiled. “What? I’m listening.”

“Jim, you will agree, I’m sure, that there’s nothing more destructive than a monopoly.”

“Yes,” said Taggart, “on the one hand. On the other, there’s the blight of unbridled competition.”

“That’s true. That’s very true. The proper course is always, in my opinion, in the middle. So it is, I think, the duty of society to snip the extremes, now isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Taggart, “it is.”

“Consider the picture in the iron-ore business. The national output seems to be falling at an ungodly rate. It threatens the existence of the whole steel industry. Steel mills are shutting down all over the country. There’s only one mining company that’s lucky enough not to be affected by the general conditions. Its output seems to be plentiful and always available on schedule. But who gets the benefit of it? Nobody except its owner. Would you say that that’s fair?”

“No,” said Taggart, “it isn’t fair.”

“Most of us don’t own iron mines. How can we compete with a man who’s got a corner on God’s natural resources? Is it any wonder that he can always deliver steel, while we have to struggle and wait and lose our customers and go out of business? Is it in the public interest to let one man destroy an entire industry?”

“No,” said Taggart, “it isn’t.”

“It seems to me that the national policy ought to be aimed at the objective of giving everybody a chance at his fair share of iron ore, with a view toward the preservation of the industry as a whole. Don’t you think so?”

“I think so.”

Boyle sighed. Then he said cautiously, “But I guess there aren’t many people in Washington capable of understanding a progressive social policy.”

Taggart said slowly, “There are. No, not many and not easy to approach, but there are. I might speak to them.”

Boyle picked up his drink and swallowed it in one gulp, as if he had heard all he had wanted to hear.

“Speaking of progressive policies, Orren,” said Taggart, “you might ask yourself whether at a time of transportation shortages, when so many railroads are going bankrupt and large areas are left without rail service, whether it is in the public interest to tolerate wasteful duplication of services and the destructive, dog-eat-dog competition of newcomers in territories where established companies have historical priority.”

“Well, now,” said Boyle pleasantly, “that seems to be an interesting question to consider. I might discuss it with a few friends in the National Alliance of Railroads.”

“Friendships,” said Taggart in the tone of an idle abstraction, “are more valuable than gold.” Unexpectedly, he turned to Larkin. “Don’t you think so, Paul?”

“Why ... yes,” said Larkin, astonished. “Yes, of course.”

“I am counting on yours.”

“Huh?”

“I am counting on your many friendships.”

They all seemed to know why Larkin did not answer at once; his shoulders seemed to shrink down, closer to the table. “If everybody could pull for a common purpose, then nobody would have to be hurt!” he cried suddenly, in a tone of incongruous despair; he saw Taggart watching him and added, pleading, “I wish we didn’t have to hurt anybody.”

“That is an anti-social attitude,” drawled Taggart. “People who are afraid to sacrifice somebody have no business talking about a common purpose.”

“But I’m a student of history,” said Larkin hastily. “I recognize historical necessity.”

“Good,” said Taggart.

“I can’t be expected to buck the trend of the whole world, can I?” Larkin seemed to plead, but the plea was not addressed to anyone. “Can I?”

“You can‘t, Mr. Larkin,” said Wesley Mouch. “You and I are not to be blamed, if we—”

Larkin jerked his head away; it was almost a shudder; he could not bear to look at Mouch.

“Did you have a good time in Mexico, Orren?” asked Taggart, his voice suddenly loud and casual. All of them seemed to know that the purpose of their meeting was accomplished and whatever they had come here to understand was understood.

“Wonderful place, Mexico,” Boyle answered cheerfully. “Very stimulating and thought-provoking. Their food rations are something awful, though. I got sick. But they’re working mighty hard to put their country on its feet.”

“How are things going down there?”

“Pretty splendid, it seems to me, pretty splendid. Right at the moment, however, they’re ... But then, what they’re aiming at is the future. The People’s State of Mexico has a great future. They’ll beat us all in a few years.”

“Did you go down to the San Sebastián Mines?”

The four figures at the table sat up straighter and tighter; all of them had invested heavily in the stock of the San Sebastián Mines.

Boyle did not answer at once, so that his voice seemed unexpected and unnaturally loud when it burst forth: “Oh, sure, certainly, that’s what I wanted to see most.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“How are things going?”

“Great. Great. They must certainly have the biggest deposits of copper on earth, down inside that mountain!”

“Did they seem to be busy?”

“Never saw such a busy place in my life.”

“What were they busy doing?”

“Well, you know, with the kind of Spic superintendent they have down there, I couldn’t understand half of what he was talking about, but they’re certainly busy.”

“Any ... trouble of any kind?”

“Trouble? Not at San Sebastián. It’s private property, the last piece of it left in Mexico, and that does seem to make a difference.”

“Orren,” Taggart asked cautiously, “what about those rumors that they’re planning to nationalize the San Sebastián Mines?”

“Slander,” said Boyle angrily, “plain, vicious slander. I know it for certain. I had dinner with the Minister of Culture and lunches with all the rest of the boys.”

“There ought to be a law against irresponsible gossip,” said Taggart sullenly. “Let’s have another drink.”

He waved irritably at a waiter. There was a small bar in a dark corner of the room, where an old, wizened bartender stood for long stretches of time without moving. When called upon, he moved with contemptuous slowness. His job was that of servant to men’s relaxation and pleasure, but his manner was that of an embittered quack minister ing to some guilty disease.

The four men sat in silence until the waiter returned with their drinks. The glasses he placed on the table were four spots of faint blue glitter in the semi-darkness, like four feeble jets of gas flame. Taggart reached for his glass and smiled suddenly.

“Let’s drink to the sacrifices to historical necessity,” he said, looking at Larkin.

There was a moment’s pause; in a lighted room, it would have been the contest of two men holding each other’s eyes; here, they were merely looking at each other’s eye sockets. Then Larkin picked up his glass.

“It’s my party, boys,” said Taggart, as they drank.

Nobody found anything else to say, until Boyle spoke up with indifferent curiosity. “Say, Jim, I meant to ask you, what in hell’s the matter with your train service down on the San Sebastián Line?”

“Why, what do you mean? What is the matter with it?”

“Well, I don’t know, but running just one passenger train a day is—”

“One train?”

“—is pretty measly service, it seems to me, and what a train! You must have inherited those coaches from your great-grandfather, and he must have used them pretty hard. And where on earth did you get that wood-burning locomotive?”

“
Wood
-burning?”

“That’s what I said, wood-burning. I never saw one before, except in photographs. What museum did you drag it out of? Now don’t act as if you didn’t know it, just tell me what’s the gag?”

“Yes, of course I knew it,” said Taggart hastily. “It was just ... You just happened to choose the one week when we had a little trouble with our motive power—our new engines are on order, but there’s been a slight delay—you know what a problem we’re having with the manufacturers of locomotives—but it’s only temporary.”

“Of course,” said Boyle. “Delays can’t be helped. It’s the strangest train I ever rode on, though. Nearly shook my guts out.”

Within a few minutes, they noticed that Taggart had become silent. He seemed preoccupied with a problem of his own. When he rose abruptly, without apology, they rose, too, accepting it as a command.

Larkin muttered, smiling too strenuously, “It was a pleasure, Jim. A pleasure. That’s how great projects are born—over a drink with friends.”

“Social reforms are slow,” said Taggart coldly. “It is advisable to be patient and cautious.” For the first time, he turned to Wesley Mouch. “What I like about you, Mouch, is that you don’t talk too much.”

Wesley Mouch was Rearden’s Washington man.

There was still a remnant of sunset light in the sky, when Taggart and Boyle emerged together into the street below. The transition was faintly shocking to them—the enclosed barroom led one to expect midnight darkness. A tall building stood outlined against the sky, sharp and straight like a raised sword. In the distance beyond it, there hung the calendar.

Taggart fumbled irritably with his coat collar, buttoning it against the chill of the streets. He had not intended to go back to the office tonight, but he had to go back. He had to see his sister.

“... a difficult undertaking ahead of us, Jim,” Boyle was saying, “a difficult undertaking, with so many dangers and complications and so much at stake ...”

“It all depends,” James Taggart answered slowly, “on knowing the people who make it possible.... That’s what has to be known—who makes it possible.”

Dagny Taggart was nine years old when she decided that she would run the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad some day. She stated it to herself when she stood alone between the rails, looking at the two straight lines of steel that went off into the distance and met in a single point. What she felt was an arrogant pleasure at the way the track cut through the woods: it did not belong in the midst of ancient trees, among green branches that hung down to meet green brush and the lonely spears of wild nowers—but there it was. The two steel lines were brilliant in the sun, and the black ties were like the rungs of a ladder which she had to climb.

It was not a sudden decision, but only the final seal of words upon something she had known long ago. In unspoken understanding, as if bound by a vow it had never been necessary to take, she and Eddie Willers had given themselves to the railroad from the first conscious days of their childhood.

She felt a bored indifference toward the immediate world around her, toward other children and adults alike. She took it as a regrettable accident, to be borne patiently for a while, that she happened to be imprisoned among people who were dull. She had caught a glimpse of another world and she knew that it existed somewhere, the world that had created trains, bridges, telegraph wires and signal lights winking in the night. She had to wait, she thought, and grow up to that world.

She never tried to explain why she liked the railroad. Whatever it was that others felt, she knew that this was one emotion for which they had no equivalent and no response. She felt the same emotion in school, in classes of mathematics, the only lessons she liked. She felt the excitement of solving problems, the insolent delight of taking up a challenge and disposing of it without effort, the eagerness to meet another, harder test. She felt, at the same time, a growing respect for the adversary, for a science that was so clean, so strict, so luminously rational. Studying mathematics, she felt, quite simply and at once: “How great that men have done this” and “How wonderful that I’m so good at it.” It was the joy of admiration and of one’s own ability, growing together. Her feeling for the railroad was the same: worship of the skill that had gone to make it, of the ingenuity of someone’s clean, reasoning mind, worship with a secret smile that said she would know how to make it better some day. She hung around the tracks and the roundhouses like a humble student, but the humility had a touch of future pride, a pride to be earned.