Ayn Rand Reader by Ayn Rand & Gary Hull & Leonard Peikoff

Author:Ayn Rand & Gary Hull & Leonard Peikoff [Rand, Ayn & Hull, Gary & Peikoff, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Anthologies, Literary, USA, Philosophy, Literary Collections, Modern, Literary Criticism, Literature: Classics, Essays, History & Surveys, Women authors, Ayn, Rand, History & Surveys - Modern, Novels, 1905-1982, Western philosophy, Letters & Miscellaneous, from c 1900 -, Dutch, Literary essays, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Other prose: from c 1900 -, other prose & writers: from c 1900 -
ISBN: 9780452280403
Google: D-FsUTHDeSkC
Amazon: 0452280400
Publisher: Plume
Published: 1999-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

EDITOR’S NOTE: By the novel’s midpoint, the economy is in a state of collapse. Dagny Taggart has quit as operating vice president of Taggart Transcontinental, and has been replaced by Clifton Locey, a man whose sole motive is to avoid responsibility. The Unification Board, created by Directive 10-289, is the government agency that now has total power over employment.

Thematically, this chapter answers the question “Philosophy: who needs it?”

The Tunnel Disaster

KIP CHALMERS swore as the train lurched and spilled his cocktail over the table top. He slumped forward, his elbow in the puddle, and said:

“God damn these railroads! What’s the matter with their track? You’d think with all the money they’ve got they’d disgorge a little, so we wouldn’t have to bump like farmers on a hay cart!”

His three companions did not take the trouble to answer. It was late, and they remained in the lounge merely because an effort was needed to retire to their compartments. The lights of the lounge looked like feeble portholes in a fog of cigarette smoke dank with the odor of alcohol. It was a private car, which Chalmers had demanded and obtained for his journey; it was attached to the end of the Comet and it swung like the tail of a nervous animal as the Comet coiled through the curves of the mountains.

“I’m going to campaign for the nationalization of the railroads,” said Kip Chalmers, glaring defiantly at a small, gray man who looked at him without interest. “That’s going to be my platform plank. I’ve got to have a platform plank. I don’t like Jim Taggart. He looks like a soft-boiled clam. To hell with the railroads! It’s time we took them over.”

“Go to bed,” said the man, “if you expect to look like anything human at the big rally tomorrow.”

“Do you think we’ll make it?”

“You’ve got to make it.”

“I know I’ve got to. But I don’t think we’ll get there on time. This goddamn snail of a super-special is hours late.”

“You’ve got to be there, Kip,” said the man ominously, in that stubborn monotone of the unthinking which asserts an end without concern for the means.

“God damn you, don’t you suppose I know it?”

Kip Chalmers had curly blond hair and a shapeless mouth. He came from a semi-wealthy, semi-distinguished family, but he sneered at wealth and distinction in a manner which implied that only a top-rank aristocrat could permit himself such a degree of cynical indifference. He had graduated from a college which specialized in breeding that kind of aristocracy. The college had taught him that the purpose of ideas is to fool those who are stupid enough to think. He had made his way in Washington with the grace of a cat-burglar, climbing from bureau to bureau as from ledge to ledge of a crumbling structure. He was ranked as semi-powerful, but his manner made laymen mistake him for nothing less than Wesley Mouch.

For reasons of his own particular strategy, Kip Chalmers had decided to enter popular politics and to

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