Atlas Shrugged

He knew that they understood. He saw, on their faces, that stubbornly evasive look which he had once thought to be the look of a liar cheating a victim, but which he now knew to be worse: the look of a man cheating himself of his own consciousness. They did not answer. They remained silent, as if struggling, not to make him forget his question, but to make themselves forget that they had heard it.

"It's a sound, practical Plan!" snapped James Taggart unexpectedly, with an angry edge of sudden animation in his voice. "It will work!

It has to work! We want it to work!"

No one answered him.

"Mr. Rearden . . . ?" said Holloway timidly.

"Well, let me see," said Rearden. "Orren Boyle's Associated Steel owns 60 open-hearth furnaces, one-third of them standing idle and the rest producing an average of 300 tons of steel per furnace per day.

I own 20 open-hearth furnaces, working at capacity, producing tons of Rearden Metal per furnace per day. So we own SO 'pooled' furnaces with a 'pooled' output of 27,000 tons, which makes an average of 337.5 tons per furnace. Each day of the year, I, producing 15,000 tons, will be paid for 6,750 tons. Boyle, producing 12,000 tons, will be paid for 20,250 tons. Never mind the other members of the pool, they won't change the scale, except to bring the average still lower, most of them doing worse than Boyle, none of them producing as much as I. Now how long do you expect me to last under your Plan?"

There was no answer, then Lawson cried suddenly, blindly, righteously, "In time of national peril, it is your duty to serve, suffer and work for the salvation of the country!"

"I don't see why pumping my earnings into Orren Boyle's pocket is going to save the country."

"You have to make certain sacrifices to the public welfare!"

"I don't see why Orren Boyle is more 'the public' than I am."

"Oh, it's not a question of Mr. Boyle at all! It's much wider than any one person. It's a matter of preserving the country's natural resources—such as factories—and saving the whole of the nation's industrial plant. We cannot permit the ruin of an establishment as vast as Mr. Boyle's. The country needs it."

"I think," said Rearden slowly, "that the country needs me much more than it needs Orren Boyle."

"But of course!" cried Lawson with startled enthusiasm. "The country needs you, Mr. Rearden! You do realize that, don't you?"

But Lawson's avid pleasure at the familiar formula of self-immolation, vanished abruptly at the sound of Rearden's voice, a cold, trader's voice answering: "I do."

"It's not Boyle alone who's involved," said Holloway pleadingly.

"The country's economy would not be able to stand a major dislocation at the present moment. There are thousands of Boyle's workers, suppliers and customers. What would happen to them if Associated Steel went bankrupt?"

"What will happen to the thousands of my workers, suppliers and customers when I go bankrupt?"

"You, Mr. Rearden?" said Holloway incredulously. "But you're the richest, safest and strongest industrialist in the country at this moment!"

"What about the moment after next?"

"Uh?"

"How long do you expect me to be able to produce at a loss?"

"Oh, Mr. Rearden, I have complete faith in you!"

"To hell with your faith! How do you expect me to do it?"

"You'll manage!"

"How?"

There was no answer.

"We can't theorize about the future," cried Wesley Mouch, "when here's an immediate national collapse to avoid! We've got to save the country's economy! We've got to do something!" Rearden's imperturbible glance of curiosity drove him to heedlessness. "If you don't like it, do you have a better solution to offer?"

"Sure," said Rearden easily. "If it's production that you want, then 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, but . . . but we couldn't!" gasped Mouch. "That would be monopoly!"

Rearden chuckled. "Okay," he said indifferently, "then let my mills superintendent buy it. Hell do a better job than Boyle."

"Oh, but that would be letting the strong have an advantage over the weak! We couldn't do that!"

"Then don't talk about saving the country's economy."

"All we want is—" He stopped.

"All you want is production without men who're able to produce, isn't it?"

"That . . . that's theory. That's just a theoretical extreme. All we want is a temporary adjustment."

"You've been making those temporary adjustments for years. Don't you see that you've run out of time?"

"That's just theo . . ." His voice trailed off and stopped.

"Well, now, look here," said Holloway cautiously, "it's not as if Mr.

Boyle were actually . . . weak. Mr. Boyle is an extremely able man.