Atlas Shrugged

Dagny refuses to debate with Scudder about the merits of RM at the New York Business Council. Fleeing the engagement, she meets a worker who tells her that John Galt was a man who discovered the fountain of eternal youth but couldn’t bring it down the mountain for anyone else. The State Science Institute (SSI) attempts to bully Rearden into either taking his RM off the market or selling them the rights to it, and when he refuses, they release a statement condemning the new alloy. Dagny meets with Dr. Stadler, the head of the SSI, but he is tired and bitter and refuses to retract the statement despite knowing the merits of RM.

TT bears the brunt of the public backlash against RM, so Dagny starts her own company to take ownership of the new Rio Norte line. Officially, she quits TT, but she still runs the railroad through Eddie Willers from behind the scenes and will return with the new line once it is successfully completed. She begs Francisco to buy stock in her new company, but he refuses. He is shaken and aghast to learn that Dagny has decided to name the new line “John Galt” in defiance of the hopelessness and helplessness that the common rhetorical question “Who is John Galt?” represents.

The few businessmen with integrity and many of the Colorado industrialists buy stock in Dagny’s company, allowing her to purchase the RM for the track and order a bridge of Rearden’s own design. Rearden refuses his mother’s request that he employ Philip but agrees to supply a desperate customer with steel despite the difficulties involved. The equal opportunities bill passes, which is a near unendurable blow to Rearden. In his moment of anguish, however, he has an epiphany about a new bridge design. In a paroxysm of enthusiasm, he calls Dagny to tell her about it.

Eddie once more updates John Galt on Dagny and TT, and Dagny later spots Galt as a shadowy figure watching her work from her Colorado office. Lilian laughingly informs Rearden of the rumors that he and Dagny are having an affair, which angers him. Rearden signs his ore mines over to Paul Larkin, who beseeches him for sympathy and absolution. He signs his coal mines over to Ken Danagger, who stoically promises to supply Rearden with coal at cost. Rearden reinvests the money that he received for his looted businesses by deferring TT’s payment for the RM tracks, saving TT company from its dire financial straits.

TT is unpopular in public opinion, with many public figures criticizing RM. Nevertheless, progress on the John Galt line’s construction continues steadily, and all available engineers volunteer to drive the first train on the line against the advice of their union. In a press conference, both Dagny and Rearden are mockingly forthright that their motivation in constructing the line is simply to make money.

The first train takes the John Galt line just days before the deadline, and there’s a jubilant media circus as it pulls off. Every mile of the track is guarded by old men and boys wearing TT rail caps, and the journey through Colorado to Wyatt’s oil field is fast, exhilarating, and faultless. An ecstatic Wyatt meets them off the train and invites them to stay with him and the other Colorado businessmen that night. After dinner, Dagny and Rearden have sex with each other for the first time.

Jim meets Cheryl Brooks, an ambitious young shop assistant who admires him greatly because she has heard in the press that all Dagny’s achievements with the John Galt line are actually Jim’s. Jim invites her for a drink, talks about the meaningless of material achievements, and congratulates himself for not taking advantage of her sexually.

The morning after Rearden and Dagny sleep together, Rearden is ashamed of their depravity, whereas Dagny considers it a point of pride. They continue their affair when they return to New York, and Rearden expresses his admiration for Dagny. Dagny has returned to TT employ, and the John Galt line is once more the Rio Norte line. Mouch has taken over as the increasingly empowered top coordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, and Owen Kellogg works as a transient laborer.

Rearden puts the bracelet of RM on Dagny, and the two of them take a holiday together. They drive to Michigan to investigate an ore mine and then to Wisconsin to search for abandoned tools that might help Colorado’s Ted Nilson produce new train engines. In the derelict factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, Dagny finds the dismantled prototype of an incredible new type of motor that has the potential to change everything with its efficiency. They are unable to reconstruct a functional prototype from the remnants, and Rearden suspects that its maker must be dead, though Dagny vows to find him if he isn’t.

Rearden returns to work, trying to compensate for Larkin’s unreliability as a provider of ore. Lilian tells him that she feels neglected and that it’s his duty to make her happy; she wants to be the only thing that matters to him. The Washington men under Mouch pass a series of initiatives aimed at redistributing the money that is flooding into the productive industrial region of Colorado.

Dagny is trying to discover the identity of the motor’s creator through investigating the Twentieth Century Motor Company, which went bankrupt over a decade ago. The factory was funded by a loan that was forced from banker Midas Mulligan by suing him, which led to Mulligan retiring. One of the former owners describes the ruinous factory policy as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” (1, 10, 323), which is the pinnacle of evil according to Dagny’s system of morals. It was the assistant of the factory’s now deceased chief engineer who invented the motor, a man later revealed to be John Galt. Dagny tracks down a friend of his who turns out to be the retired philosopher, Dr. Akson, who now works as a diner chef. He persuades Dagny to believe that her quest is futile and gives her a high-quality cigarette stamped with a dollar sign.

Dagny learns that a sudden spate of borderline illegal bills has been passed to limit industry and tax the businesses of Colorado extortionately. Dagny urgently but unsuccessfully tries to contact Wyatt and rushes to Colorado, but as her train arrives, she sees his oil field set ablaze. Wyatt and many of the other businessmen of Colorado have disappeared.