The following is why I like the book Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shrugged is almost unknown outside America - but inside America it is well known, a fiction, but a pivotal defining work of American politics. Ayn Rand was born in the Soviet Union - her book Atlas Shrugged describes a fictional dystopian America which strongly resembles the injustice and futility of her former homeland. This passage describes why people let a disaster occur, in the full knowledge of what would happen. The situation is that a train carrying an important politician has been held up, because he engine was derailed. The choice is to delay the politician, which will cause him to miss an important political rally, or to attach a coal burning engine, the only one available - which will certainly kill everyone with poisonous fumes when the train tries to traverse an 8 mile tunnel. Nobody wants to disappoint the powerful politician, who has the power to see they never work again - so they all try to find ways to pass the responsibility for failure on to other people. ====== He called the home of Clifton Locey. All the rage which he could not pour upon Kip Chalmers, was poured over the telephone wire upon Clifton Locey. Do something! screamed Taggart. I dont care what you do, its your job, not mine, but see to it that that train gets through! What in hell is going on? I never heard of the Comet being held up! Is that how you run your department? Its a fine thing when important passengers have to start sending messages to me! At least, when my sister ran the place, I wasnt awakened in the middle of the night over every spike that broke in Iowa--Colorado, I mean! Im so sorry, Jim, said Clifton Locey smoothly, in a tone that balanced apology, reassurance and the right degree of patronizing confidence. Its just a misunderstanding. Its somebodys stupid mistake. Dont worry, 111 take care of it. I was, as a matter of fact, in bed, but Ill attend to it at once. Clifton Locey was not in bed; he had just returned from a round of night clubs, in the company of a young lady. He asked her to wait and hurried to the offices of Taggart Transcontinental. None of the night staff who saw him there could say why he chose to appear in person, but neither could they say that it had been unnecessary. He rushed in and out of several offices, was seen by many people and gave an impression of great activity. The only physical result of it was an order that went over the wires to Dave Mitchum, superintendent of the Colorado Division: Give an engine to Mr. Chalmers at once. Send the Comet through safely and without unnecessary delay. If you are unable to perform your duties, I shall hold you responsible before the Unification Board, Clifton Locey, Then, calling his girl friend to join him, Clifton Locey drove to a country roadhouse--to make certain that no one would be able to find him in the next few hours. The dispatcher at Silver Springs was baffled by the order that he handed to Dave Mitchum, but Dave Mitchum understood. He knew that no railroad order would ever speak in such terms as giving an engine to a passenger; he knew that the thing was a show piece, he guessed what sort of show was being staged, and he felt a cold sweat at the realization of who was being framed as the goat of the show. Whats the matter, Dave? asked the trainmaster. Mitchum did not answer. He seized the telephone, his hands shaking as he begged for a connection to the Taggart operator in New York, He looked like an animal in a trap. He begged the New York operator to get him Mr. Clifton Loceys home. The operator tried. There was no answer. He begged the operator to keep on trying and to try every number he could think of, where Mr. Locey might be found. The operator promised and Mitchum hung up, but knew that it was useless to wait or to speak to anyone in Mr. Loceys department. Whats the matter, Dave? Mitchum handed him the order--and saw by the look on the train masters face that the trap was as bad as he had suspected. He called the Region Headquarters of Taggart Transcontinental at Omaha, Nebraska, and begged to speak to the general manager of the region. There was a brief silence on the wire, then the voice of the Omaha operator told him that the general manager had resigned and vanished three days ago--over a little trouble with Mr. Locey, the voice added. He asked to speak to the assistant general manager in charge of his particular district; but the assistant was out of town for the week end and could not be reached. Get me somebody else! Mitchum screamed. Anybody, of any district! For Christs sake, get me somebody wholl tell me what to do! The man who came on the wire was the assistant general manager of the Iowa-Minnesota District. What? he interrupted at Mitchums first words. At Winston, Colorado? Why in hell are you calling me? . . . No, dont tell me what happened, I dont want to know it! . . . No, I said! No! Youre not going to frame me into having to explain afterwards why I did or didnt do anything about whatever it is. Its not my problem! . . . Speak to some region executive, dont pick on me, what do I have to do with Colorado? . . . Oh hell, I dont know, get the chief engineer, speak to him! The chief engineer of the Central Region answered impatiently, Yes? What? What is it?--and Mitchum rushed desperately to explain. When the chief engineer heard that there was no Diesel, he snapped, Then hold the train, of course! When he heard about Mr. Chalmers, he said, his voice suddenly subdued, Hm . . . Kip Chalmers? Of Washington? . . . Well, I dont know. That would be a matter for Mr. Locey to decide. When Mitchum said, Mr. Locey ordered me to arrange it, but-- the chief engineer snapped in great relief, Then do exactly as Mr. Locey says! and hung up. Dave Mitchum replaced the telephone receiver cautiously. He did not scream any longer. Instead, he-tiptoed to a chair, almost as if he were sneaking. He sat looking at Mr. Loceys order for a long time. Then he snatched a glance about the room. The dispatcher was busy at his telephone. The trainmaster and the road foreman were there, but they pretended that they were not waiting. He wished Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher, would go home; Bill Brent stood in a corner, watching him. Brent was a short, thin man with broad shoulders; he was forty, but looked younger; he had the pale face of an office worker and the hard, lean features of a cowboy. He was the best dispatcher on the system. Mitchum rose abruptly and walked upstairs to his office, clutching Loceys order in his hand. Dave Mitchum was not good at understanding problems of engineering and transportation, but he understood men like Clifton Locey. He understood the kind of game the New York executives were playing and what they were now doing to him. The order did not tell him to give Mr. Chalmers a coal-burning engine--just an engine. If the time came to answer questions, wouldnt Mr. Locey gasp in shocked indignation that he had expected a division superintendent to know that only a Diesel engine could be meant in that order? The order stated that he was to send the Comet through safely--wasnt a division superintendent expected to know what was safe?--and without unnecessary delay. What was an unnecessary delay? If the possibility of a major disaster was involved, wouldnt a delay of a week or a month be considered necessary? The New York executives did not care, thought Mitchum; they did not care whether Mr. Chalmers reached his meeting on time, or whether an unprecedented catastrophe struck their rails; they cared only about making sure that they would not be blamed for either. If he held the train, they would make him the scapegoat to appease the anger of Mr. Chalmers; if he sent the train through and it did not reach the western portal of the tunnel, they would put the blame on his incompetence; they would claim that he had acted against their orders, in either case. What would he be able to prove? To whom? One could prove nothing to a tribunal that had no stated policy, no defined procedure, no rules of evidence, no binding principles--a tribunal, such as the Unification Board, that pronounced men guilty or innocent as it saw fit, with no standard of guilt or innocence. Dave Mitchum knew nothing about the philosophy of law; but he knew that when a court is not bound by any rules, it is not bound by any facts, and then a hearing is not an issue of justice, but an issue of men, and your fate depends not on what you have or have not done, but on whom you do or do not know. He asked himself what chance he would have at such a hearing against Mr. James Taggart, Mr. Clifton Locey, Mr. Kip Chalmers and their powerful friends. Dave Mitchum had spent his life slipping around the necessity of ever making a decision; he had done it by waiting to be told and never being certain of anything. All that he now allowed into his brain was a long, indignant whine against injustice. Fate, he thought, had singled him out for an unfair amount of bad luck: he was being framed by his superiors on the only good job he had ever held. He had never been taught to understand that the manner in which he obtained this job, and the frame-up, were inextricable parts of a single whole. As he looked at Loceys order, he thought that he could hold the Comet, attach Mr. Chalmers1 car to an engine and send it into the tunnel, alone. But he shook his head before the thought was fully formed: he knew that this would force Mr. Chalmers to recognize the nature of the risk; Mr. Chalmers would refuse; he would continue to demand a safe and non-existent engine. And more: this would mean that he, Mitchum, would have to assume responsibility, admit full knowledge of the danger, stand in the open and identify the exact nature of the situation--the one act which the policy of his superiors was based on evading, the one key to their game. Dave Mitchum was not the man to rebel against his background or to question the moral code of those in charge. The choice he made was not to challenge, but to follow the policy of his superiors. Bill Brent could have- beaten him in any contest of technology, but here was an endeavor at which he could beat Bill Brent without effort. There had once been a society where men needed the particular talents of Bill Brent, if they wished to survive; what they needed now was the talent of Dave Mitchum. Dave Mitchum sat down at his secretarys typewriter and, by means of two fingers, carefully typed out an order to the trainmaster and another to the road foreman. The first instructed the trainmaster to summon a locomotive crew at once, for a purpose described only as an emergency; the second instructed the road foreman to send the best engine available to Winston, to stand by for emergency assistance. He put carbon copies of the orders into his own pocket, then opened the door, yelled for the night dispatcher to come up and handed him the two orders for the two men downstairs. The night dispatcher was a conscientious young boy who trusted his superiors and knew that discipline was the first rule of the railroad business. He was astonished that Mitchum should wish to send written orders down one flight of stairs, but he asked no questions, Mitchum waited nervously. After a while, he saw the figure of the road foreman walking across the yards toward the roundhouse. He felt relieved: the two men had not come up to confront him in person; they had understood and they would play the game as he was playing it. The road foreman walked across the yards, looking down at the ground. He was thinking of his wife, his two children and the house which he had spent a lifetime to own. He knew what his superiors were doing and he wondered whether he should refuse to obey them. He had never been afraid of losing his job; with the confidence of a competent man, he had known that if he quarreled with one employer, he would always be able to find another. Now, he was afraid; he had no right to quit or to seek a job; if he defied an employer, he would be delivered into the unanswerable power of a single Board, and if the Board ruled against him, it would mean being sentenced to the slow death of starvation: it would mean being barred from any employment. He knew that the Board would rule against him; he knew that the key to the dark, capricious mystery of the Boards contradictory decisions was the secret power of pull. What chance would he have against Mr. Chalmers? There had been a time when the self-interest of his employers had demanded that he exercise his utmost ability. Now, ability was not wanted any longer. There had been a time when he had been required to do his best and rewarded accordingly. Now, he could expect nothing but punishment, if he tried to follow his conscience. There had been a time when he had been expected to think. Now, they did not want him to think, only to obey. They did not want him to have a conscience any longer. Then why should he raise his voice? For whose sake? He thought of the passengers--the three hundred passengers aboard the Comet. He thought of his children. He had a son in high school and a daughter, nineteen, of whom he was fiercely, painfully proud, because she was recognized as the most beautiful girl in town. He asked himself whether he could deliver his children to the fate of the children of the unemployed, as he had seen them in the blighted areas, in the settlements around closed factories and along the tracks of discontinued railroads. He saw, in astonished horror, that the choice which he now had to make was between the lives of his children and the lives of the passengers on the Comet. A conflict of this kind had never been possible before. It was by protecting the safety of the passengers that he had earned the security of his children; he had served one by serving the other; there had been no clash of interests, no call for victims. Now, if he wanted to save the passengers, he had to doit at the price of his children. He remembered dimly the sermons he had heard about the beauty of self- immolation, about the virtue of sacrificing to others that which was ones dearest. He knew nothing about the philosophy of ethics; but he knew suddenly--not in words, but in the form of a dark, angry, savage pain--that if this was virtue, then he wanted no part of it. He walked into the roundhouse and ordered a large, ancient coal burning locomotive to be made ready for the run to Winston. The trainmaster reached for the telephone in the dispatchers office, to summon an engine crew, as ordered. But his hand stopped, holding the receiver. It struck him suddenly that he was summoning men to their death, and that of the twenty lives listed on the sheet before him, two would be ended by his choice. He felt a physical sensation of cold, nothing more; he felt no concern, only a puzzled, indifferent astonishment. It had never been his job to call men out to die; his job had been to call them out to earn their living. It was strange, he thought; and it was strange that his hand had stopped; what made it stop was like something he would have felt twenty years ago--no, he thought, strange, only one month ago, not longer. He was forty-eight years old. He had no family, no friends, no ties to any living being in the world. Whatever capacity for devotion he had possessed, the capacity which others scatter among many random concerns, he had given it whole to the person of his young brother --the brother, his junior by twenty- five years, whom he had brought up. He had sent him through a technological college, and he had known, as had all the teachers, that the boy had the mark of genius on the forehead of his grim, young face. With the same single- tracked devotion as his brothers, the boy had cared for nothing but his studies, not for sports or parties or girls, only for the vision of the things he was going to create as an inventor. He had graduated from college and had gone, on a salary unusual for his age, into the research laboratory of a great electrical concern in Massachusetts. This was now May 28, thought the trainmaster. It was on May 1 that Directive 10-289 had been issued. It was on the evening of May I that he had been informed that his brother had committed suicide. The trainmaster had heard it said that the directive was necessary to save the country. He could not know whether this was true or not; he had no way of knowing what was necessary to save a country. But driven by some feeling which he could not express, he had walked into the office of the editor of the local newspaper and demanded that they publish the story of his brothers death. People have to know it, had been all he could give as his reason. He had been unable to explain that the bruised connections of his mind had formed the wordless conclusion that if this was done by the will of the people, then the people had to know it; he could not believe that they would do it, if they knew. The editor had refused; he had stated that it would be bad for the countrys morale. The trainmaster knew nothing about political philosophy; but he knew that that had been the moment when he lost all concern for the life or death of any human being or of the country. He thought, holding the telephone receiver, that maybe he should warn the men whom he was about to call. They trusted him; it would never occur to them that he could knowingly send them to their death. But he shook his head: this was only an old thought, last years thought, a remnant of the time when he had trusted them, too. It did not matter now. His brain worked slowly, as if he were dragging his thoughts through a vacuum where no emotion responded to spur them on; he thought that there would be trouble if he warned anyone, there would be some sort of fight and it was he who had to make some great effort to start it. He had forgotten what it was that one started this sort of fight for. Truth? Justice? Brother-love? He did not want to make an effort. He was very tired. If he warned all the men on his list, he thought, there would be no one to run that engine, so he would save two lives and also three hundred lives aboard the Comet. But nothing responded to the figures in his mind; lives was just a word, it had no meaning. He raised the telephone receiver to his ear, he called two numbers, he summoned an engineer and a fireman to report for duty at once. Engine Number 306 had left for Winston, when Dave Mitchum came downstairs. Get a track motor car ready for me, he ordered, Im going to run up to Fairmount. Fairmount was a small station, twenty miles east on the line. The men nodded, asking no questions. Bill Brent was not among them. Mitchum walked into Brents office. Brent was there, sitting silently at his desk; he seemed to be waiting. Im going to Fairmount, said Mitchum; his voice was aggressively too casual, as if implying that no answer was necessary. They had a Diesel there couple of weeks ago . . . you know, emergency repairs or something. . . . Im going down to see if we could use it. He paused, but Brent said nothing. The way things stack up, said Mitchum, not looking at him, we cant hold that train till morning. Weve got to take a chance, one way or another. Now I think maybe this Diesel will do it, but thats the last one we can try for. So if you dont hear from me in half an hour, sign the order and send the Comet through with Number 306 to pull her. Whatever Brent had thought, he could not believe it when he heard it. He did not answer at once; then he said, very quietly, No. What do you mean, no? I wont do it. What do you mean, you wont? Its an order! I wont do it. Brents voice had the firmness of certainty unclouded by any emotion. Are you refusing to obey an order? I am. But you have no right to refuse! And Im not going to argue about it, either. Its what Ive decided, its my responsibility and Im not asking for your opinion. Your job is to take my orders. Will you give me that order in writing? Why, God damn you, are you hinting that you dont trust me? Are you . . . ? Why do you have to go to Fairmount, Dave? Why cant you telephone them about that Diesel, if you think that they have one? Youre not going to tell me how to do my job! Youre not going to sit there and question me! Youre going to keep your trap shut and do as youre told or Ill give you a chance to talk--to the Unification Board! It was hard to decipher emotions on Brents cowboy face, but Mitchum saw something that resembled a look of incredulous horror; only it was horror at some sight of his own, not at the words, and it had no quality of fear, not the kind of fear Mitchum had hoped for. Brent knew that tomorrow morning the issue would be his word against Mitchums; Mitchum would deny having given the order; Mitchum would show written proof that Engine Number 306 had been sent to Winston only to stand by, and would produce witnesses that he had gone to Fairmount in search of a Diesel; Mitchum would claim that the fatal order had been issued by and on the sole responsibility of Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher, it would not be much of a case, not a case that could bear close study, but it would be enough for the Unification Board, whose policy was consistent only in not permitting anything to be studied closely. Brent knew that he could play the same game and pass the frame-up on to another victim, he knew that he had the brains to work it out--except that he would rather be dead than do it. It was not the sight of Mitchum that made him sit still in horror. It was the realization that there was no one whom he could call to expose this thing and stop it--no superior anywhere on the line, from Colorado to Omaha to New York. They were in on it, all of them, they were doing the same, they had given Mitchum the lead and the method. It was Dave Mitchum who now belonged on this railroad and he, Bill Brent, who did not. As Bill Brent had learned to see, by a single glance at a few numbers on a sheet of paper, the entire trackage of a division--so he was now able to see the whole of his own life and the full price of the decision he was making. He had not fallen in love until he was past his youth; he had been thirty-six when he had found the woman he wanted. He had been engaged to her for the last four years; he had had to wait, because he had a mother to support and a widowed sister with three children. He had never been afraid of burdens, because he had known his ability to carry them, and he had never assumed an obligation unless he was certain that he could fulfill it. He had waited, he had saved his money, and now he had reached the time when he felt himself free to be happy. He was to be married in a few weeks, this coming June. He thought of it, as he sat at his desk, looking at Dave Mitchum, but the thought aroused no hesitation, only regret and a distant sadness--distant, because he knew that he could not let it be part of this moment. Bill Brent knew nothing about epistemology; but he knew that man must live by his own rational perception of reality, that he cannot act against it or escape it or find a substitute for it--and that there is no other way for him to live. He rose to his feet. Its true that so long as I hold this job, I cannot refuse to obey you, he said. But I can, if I quit. So Im quitting. Youre what? Im quitting, as of this moment. But you have no right to quit, you goddamn bastard! Dont you know that? Dont you know that Ill have you thrown in jail for it? If you want to send the sheriff for me in the morning, Ill be at home. I wont try to escape. Theres no place to go. Dave Mitchum was six-foot-two and had the build of a bruiser, but he stood shaking with fury and terror over the delicate figure of Bill Brent. You cant quit! Theres a law against it! Ive got a law! You cant walk out on me! I wont let you out! I wont let you leave this building tonight! Brent walked to the door. Will you repeat that order you gave me, in front of the others? No? Then I will! As he pulled the door open, Mitchums fist shot out, smashed into his face and knocked him down. The trainmaster and the road foreman stood in the open doorway. He quit! screamed Mitchum. The yellow bastard quit at a time like this! Hes a law-breaker and a coward! In the slow effort of rising from the floor, through the haze of blood running into his eyes, Bill Brent looked up at the two men. He saw that they understood, but he saw the closed faces of men who did not want to understand, did not want to interfere and hated him for putting them on the spot in the name of justice. He said nothing, rose to his feet and walked out of the building. Mitchum avoided looking at the others. Hey, you, he called, jerking his head at the night dispatcher across the room. Come here. Youve got to take over at once. With the door closed, he repeated to the boy the story of the Diesel at Fairmount, as he had given it to Brent, and the order to send the Comet through with Engine Number 306, if the boy did not hear from him in half an hour. The boy was in no condition to think, to speak or to understand anything: he kept seeing the blood on the face of Bill Brent, who had been his idol. Yes, sir, he answered numbly Dave Mitchum departed for Fairmount, announcing to every yardman, switchman and wiper in sight, as he boarded the track motor car that he was going in search of a Diesel for the Comet. The night dispatcher sat at his desk, watching the clock and the telephone, praying that the telephone would ring and let him hear from Mr. Mitchum. But the half-hour went by in silence, and whet there were only three minutes left, the boy felt a terror he could not explain, except that he did not want to send that order, He turned to the trainmaster and the road foreman, asking hesitantly, Mr. Mitchum gave me an order before he left, but I wonder whether I ought to send it, because I . . . I dont think its right. He said-- The trainmaster turned away; he felt no pity: the boy was about the same age as his brother had been. The road foreman snapped, Do just as Mr. Mitchum told you. Youre not supposed to think, and walked out of the room. The responsibility that James Taggart and Clifton Locey had evaded now rested on the shoulders of a trembling, bewildered boy. He hesitated, then he buttressed his courage with the thought that one did not doubt the good faith and the competence of railroad executives. He did not know that his vision of a railroad and its executives was that of a century ago. With the conscientious precision of a railroad man, in the moment when the hand of the clock ended the half-hour, he signed his name to the order instructing the Comet to proceed with Engine Number 306, and transmitted the order to Winston Station. The station agent at Winston shuddered when he looked at the order, but he was not the man to defy authority. He told himself that the tunnel was not, perhaps, as dangerous as he thought. He told himself that the best policy, these days, was not to think. When he handed their copies of the order to the conductor and the engineer of the Comet, the conductor glanced slowly about the room, from face to face, folded the slip of paper, put it into his pocket and walked out without a word. The engineer stood looking at the paper for a moment, then threw it down and said, Im not going to do it. And if its come to where this railroad hands out orders like this one, Im not going to work for it, either. Just list me as having quit. But you cant quit! cried the station agent, Theyll arrest you for it! If they find me, said the engineer, and walked out of the station into the vast darkness of the mountain night. The engineer from Silver Springs, who had brought in Number 306, was sitting in a corner of the room. He chuckled and said, Hes yellow. The station agent turned to him. Will you do it, Joe? Will you take the Comet? Joe Scott was drunk. There had been a time when a railroad man, reporting for duty with any sign of intoxication, would have been regarded as a doctor arriving for work with sores of smallpox on his face. But Joe Scott was a privileged person. Three months ago, he had been fired for an infraction of safety rules, which had caused a major wreck; two weeks ago, he had been reinstated in his job by order of the Unification Board. He was a friend of Fred Kinnan; he protected Kinnans interests in his union, not against the employers, but against the membership. Sure, said Joe Scott. Ill take the Comet. Ill get her through, if I go fast enough. The fireman of Number 306 had remained in the cab of his engine. He looked up uneasily, when they came to switch his engine to the head end of the Comet; he looked up at the red and green lights of the tunnel, hanging in the distance above twenty miles of curves. But he was a placid, amicable fellow, who made a good fireman with no hope of ever rising to engineer; his husky muscles were his only asset. He felt certain that his superiors knew what they were doing, so he did not venture any questions. The conductor stood by the rear end of the Comet. He looked at the lights of the tunnel, then at the long chain of the Comets windows. A few windows were lighted, but most of them showed only the feeble blue glow of night lamps edging the lowered blinds. He thought that he should rouse the passengers and warn them. There had been a time when he had placed the safety of the passengers above his own, not by reason of love for his fellow men, but because that responsibility was part of his job, which he accepted and felt pride in fulfilling. Now, he felt a contemptuous indifference and no desire to save them. They had asked for and accepted Directive 10-289, he thought, they went on living and daily turning away in evasion from the kind of verdicts that the Unification Board was passing on defenseless victims--why shouldnt he now turn away from them? If he saved their lives, not one of them would come forward to defend him when the Unification Board would convict him for disobeying orders, for creating a panic, for delaying Mr. Chalmers. He had no desire to be a martyr for the sake of allowing people safely to indulge in their own irresponsible evil. When the moment came, he raised his lantern and signaled the engineer to start. See? said Kip Chalmers triumphantly to Lester Tuck, as the wheels under their feet shuddered forward. Fear is the only practical means to deal with people.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 09:08:42 +0000
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