Atlas Shrugged

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

---

paper. She bowed and left the room. The superintendent followed.
Rearden smiled faintly, in greeting to what they felt. He felt nothing about that paper or its possible
consequences.
By a sort of inner convulsion—which had been like tearing a plug out to cut off the current of his
emotions—he had told himself six months ago: Act first, keep the mills going, feel later. It had made him
able to watch dispassionately the working of the Fair Share Law.
Nobody had known how that law was to be observed. First, he had been told that he could not produce
Rearden Metal in an amount greater than the tonnage of the best special alloy, other than steel, produced
by Orren Boyle. But Orren Boyle's best special alloy was some cracking mixture that no one cared to
buy. Then he had been told that he could produce Rearden Metal in the amount that Orren Boyle could
have produced, if he could have produced it. Nobody had known how this was to be determined.
Somebody in Washington had announced a figure, naming a number of tons per year, giving no reasons.
Everybody had let it go at that.
He had not known how to give every consumer who demanded it an equal share of Rearden Metal. The
waiting list of orders could not be filled in three years, even had he been permitted to work at full
capacity. New orders were coming in daily. They were not orders any longer, in the old, honorable sense
of trade; they were demands. The law provided that he could be sued by any consumer who failed to
receive his fair share of Rearden Metal.
Nobody had known how to determine what constituted a fair share of what amount. Then a bright young
boy just out of college had been sent to him from Washington, as Deputy Director of Distribution. After
many telephone conferences with the capital, the boy announced that customers would get five hundred
tons of the Metal each, in the order of the dates of their applications. Nobody had argued against his
figure.
There was no way to form an argument; the figure could have been one pound or one million tons, with
the same validity. The boy had established an office at the Rearden mills, where four girls took
applications for shares of Rearden Metal. At the present rate of the mills' production, the applications
extended well into the next century.
Five hundred tons of Rearden Metal could not provide three miles of rail for Taggart Transcontinental; it
could not provide the bracing for one of Ken Danagger's coal mines. The largest industries, Rearden's
best customers, were denied the use of his Metal. But golf clubs made of Rearden Metal were suddenly
appearing on the market, as well as coffee pots, garden tools and bathroom faucets. Ken Danagger, who
had seen the value of the Metal and had dared to order it against a fury of public opinion, was not
permitted to obtain it; his order had been left unfilled, cut off without warning by the new laws. Mr.
Mowen, who had betrayed Taggart Transcontinental in its most dangerous hour, was now making
switches of Rearden Metal and selling them to the Atlantic Southern. Rearden looked on, his emotions
plugged out.
He turned away, without a word, when anybody mentioned to him what everybody knew: the quick
fortunes that were being made on Rearden Metal. "Well, no," people said in drawing rooms, "you mustn’t
call it a black market, because it isn't, really. Nobody is selling the Metal illegally. They're just selling their
right to it. Not selling really, just pooling their shares." He did not want to know the insect intricacy of the
deals through which the "shares" were sold and pooled—nor how a manufacturer in Virginia had
produced, in two months, five thousand tons of castings made of Rearden Metal—nor what man in
Washington was that manufacturer's unlisted partner.