Atlas Shrugged [229]
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.
He knew that their profit on a ton of Rearden Metal was five times larger than his own. He said nothing. Everybody had a right to the Metal, except himself.
The young boy from Washington-whom the steel workers had nicknamed the Wet Nurse-hung around Rearden with a primitive, astonished curiosity which, incredibly, was a form of admiration. Rearden watched him with disgusted amusement. The boy had no inkling of any concept of morality; it had been bred out of him by his college; this had left him an odd frankness, naive and cynical at once, like the innocence of a savage.
"You despise me, Mr. Rearden," he had declared once, suddenly and without any resentment. "That's impractical."
"Why is it impractical?" Rearden had asked.
The boy had looked puzzled and had found no answer. He never had an answer to any "why?" He spoke in flat assertions. He would say about people, "He's old-fashioned," "He's unreconstructed," "He's unadjusted," without hesitation or explanation; he would also say, while being