Read The Journals of Ayn Rand Online

Authors: Ayn Rand

The Journals of Ayn Rand (110 page)

November 25, 1947
Notes on Visit to Inland Steel
[
In Chicago, IL
]
Railroad rails are shipped in gondolas. They are picked up by an overhead crane (magnetic), six to ten at a time, and deposited on cars inside a building. Walls of building can be open.
Process of rail making
(approximately): Iron from blast furnace (“
caste
”)—steel from open hearth furnace (
“heat”)
—steel is poured into ingot molds—ingots go to blooming mill and are rolled into billets (for rails and structural shapes) or slabs (for sheet, plate, etc.). Final shape of rails is done by three sets of rolls (mills). (The shape is the rolls themselves.)
Steel heat:
the metal is
white,
not red or orange. It has no suggestion of flame, only of a blinding white liquid. There is a violent red glow in the rising smoke—a shower of white sparks—and bits of metal that fall on the floor and start flaming. When the ladle is full, you see nothing but black and white, a blinding white liquid boiling and running over, spilling with a kind of wasteful, arrogant prodigality. The white rivulets on the side of the ladle turn to a glowing brown, then to black metal, like icicles, and start crumbling off. The slag in the slag-ladle on the side starts crusting over in thick, uneven, brown ridges, like the earth’s crust. Small flames appear in the cracks. As the crust thickens, two or three craters appear, with white liquid metal boiling slowly.
A steel mill
rolls
steel; a foundry
casts
it (in sand molds).
Coke ovens. The coke is pushed out like slices of toast. It crumbles like red-hot walls, in layers and in sudden cracks.
From Mr. Fred Gillies (general manager):
The attempted embargo on freight cars for deliveries to steel plants—by the government. Excuse—they do not empty cars fast enough. Reason—bureaucrats want freight cars to ship coal to Europe. (Stopping the country’s production for the sake of looting.)
A plant was built by the government during the war, at a cost of 25 million dollars. Twice the capacity that was ever needed or used (six open hearth furnaces—only three were used). Company that wanted to buy another such plant was refused permission by government (anti-trust law), so they did not bid on this one. No one has bid on plant. It is now used by the government as a warehouse for war surplus—clothes, candy, etc. (!)
Diesel freight engine with four motor units weighs 464 tons.
Tractive force when starting—220,000 pounds.
Average load of boxcars—27 tons. (Weight of boxcar—20 tons.)
One-hundred-car trains would weigh about 5,000 tons.
Bridge:
1,650 feet—38,000 tons of steel.
December 19, 1947
Have instance of rotten, inherited capitalist who
wants
to be nationalized—with payment, of course. He doesn’t want the responsibility of running his business, he wants to make a profit on the government paying him off at more than the business is worth, and he uses political pull to get that.
The kind of knowledge, judgment and intellectual initiative which is needed for production (the article on oil in the Texaco magazine)—and the bureaucrats’ method of evasion, double-talk, avoidance of the responsibility of the clear-cut and the specific.
Show how and why production cannot be achieved by such method.
 
 
January 5, 1948
Notes for Labor Rules
Unions forbid their members to run more than a certain number of miles per month. Why? To keep jobs for more men than is necessary? To whose advantage is that, except the union bosses who get extra dues? At whose expense is this done? At the expense of the abler men of the union, who have no right to advance, no right to work as long and make as much as they otherwise would have.
If we suppose that all the members are equally able—still, some are extraneous and should go into other work. This system only has the effect of collective, organized mediocrity—it provides that no man in the profession is going to work harder than the others, so that all will be kept at a certain level of effort and income—I suppose on the assumption that it makes them less subject to the dangers of change of job with the growth of progress and the need of fewer men in their profession. This is organized stoppage of progress—as is any case where effort and ability are artificially stopped or limited. Also—this keeps the better, abler, more ambitious men out of the profession.
Does this really protect them in their jobs, even the mediocre men? Or does it create artificial dangers of protracted unemployment? And, of course, it holds their living standard down, by stopping general progress. Actually, industrial progress which cuts jobs in one old line, creates more of them in several new lines. The readjustment or transition should not be difficult or involve periods of unemployment—
in a free economy
(because it is
gradual).
[Union policies are] instances of the savage or animal “range of the moment” psychology in an industrial civilization that functions on the
long range
principle of the intellect.
Unions are organized
against
the better members of their own profession.
(For pay rates of railroad labor, see
This Fascinating Railroad Business
[by Robert S. Henry], pp. 405—407.)
For Labor Troubles (Chapter XI)
Pat Logan and other good engineers do not get any advantage out of the John Galt Line—the higher speed only reduces their working time and they have to loaf the rest of the month, while unemployed engineers from the closing railroads flock to get part of this work, part of the new, fast runs.
The unions immediately raise the costs of the operation of the John Galt Line, when the economy of operation is so desperately needed.
With the shortage of engines and cars—
they demand to limit the length of trains,
thus requiring more engines and cars, without making full use of the ones available.
Management and inventors do everything in their power to exercise their genius to raise the productivity of employees. The employees do everything in their power to hamper and prevent this—yet demand raised pay.
Union’s demand for engineer and conductor for the “guest” line in case of emergency when train is routed over tracks of another line.
Demand for extra men on each Diesel unit.
Extra day’s pay for breaking a train in half and taking the two sections over a hill individually—in mountainous country.
Union’s excuse for limiting train length—
the caboose jerks
! ! In the case of passenger train—the “poor conductor” has too much work! !
(See the “Railway Progress” article for quotes of union leaders’ attitude toward
“those locomotive giants”
and for examples of paying employees twice for work not done.)
The added expense cuts the slim profits of the stockholders who need their own money desperately—show this concretely, as one of the results of what happens when the John Galt Line does not pay. (This leads to the ruin of the Colorado stockholders—the first pressure is on Ellis Wyatt.) (Ted
Nielsen
—no Diesels.)
The
“limitation of ability”:
Rearden is forbidden to produce more than Orren Boyle is able to produce. The reason: “Rearden is destroying Boyle’s market and chance at a livelihood.” (Same principle—Pat Logan and the bums who cannot run a big train, but Logan’s opportunity to run more trains is stopped.)
At the same time—the “Fair Share Law”: Rearden has to supply everybody, while he is not allowed to produce. Here—the rise of Mouch, who shrugs when the contradiction is pointed out to him: “Everything is a contradiction—we act on the expediency of the moment.” Mouch wants Rearden to fail, so that all business can be nationalized.
 
 
January 17, 1948
The judge on strike in the valley: “I was supposed to be the guardian of justice. But the laws they asked me to enforce made of me the executor of the vilest injustice ever perpetrated on earth.”
The legend of Prometheus who took the fire back, until men called off their vultures. (It is probably Francisco who tells [Dagny] this.)
January 30, 1948
For Chapter IX: The John Galt Line
The reaction of the public as it watches the progress of the John Galt Line:
those who sympathize and admire; those who are honestly neutral
and watch with a growing sense of sympathy, not knowing its real reason and not knowing anything about the business or technical part of it;
those who hate it and want it to fail,
in interested malice, like Orren Boyle, or in the pointless malice of the men of destruction, like James Taggart, Bertram Scudder, Philip Rearden; but
the most vicious ones
(?), the truly evil, are
those who watch with cautious interest, the safe-players and middle-of the-
roaders, who want somebody else to take the risks, then get ready to grab the benefits.
James Taggart’s attitude
must be shown clearly: when things go well, he is not happy about it, he is insidiously sarcastic; when things go badly, he is scared, but there is a strange undertone of gloating pleasure in him at the same time. This last, without his conscious admission to himself, is his gratification of his real desire—the wish for destruction.
Philip Rearden’s attitude
must be shown: he is not involved like Taggart, but his essential attitude is the same. In his case, it is the plain joy of seeing Rearden fail—then he is not the only failure, his great brother can fail, too, the great brother isn’t as great as he thinks, etc.
 
 
February 8, 1948
Note for Galt’s Speech
The whole issue in the world is between the men who want to work under compulsion and the men who don’t. Well, those of us who don’t work as slaves leave the rest of you free to do it; go right ahead, organize any kind of slavery for yourselves among yourselves. But
don’t
try to impose it on us and don’t expect us to accept it. We don’t need you. We don’t seek to force you—we rest on the principle of voluntary relations among men. But
you
—by your very premise—admit that you need us, since you find it necessary to use force against us. Well, it can’t be done.

Other books

Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh
Little, Big by John Crowley
The Best of Enemies by Jen Lancaster
A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions by Alan Lawrence Sitomer
Fly by Midnight by Lauren Quick