Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand [177]
The young man looked up. “I was in Pennsylvania last week,” he said. “I saw the Rearden mills. There’s a place that’s busy! They’re building four new open-hearth furnaces, and they’ve got six more coming.... New furnaces,” he said, looking off to the south. “Nobody’s built a new furnace on the Atlantic coast for the last five years....” He stood against the sky, on the top of a shrouded motor, looking off at the dusk with a faint smile of eagerness and longing, as one looks at the distant vision of one’s love. “They’re busy....” he said.
Then his smile vanished abruptly; the way he jerked the chain was the first break in the smooth competence of his movements: it looked like a jolt of anger.
Mr. Mowen looked at the skyline, at the belts, the wheels, the smoke—the smoke that settled heavily, peacefully across the evening air, stretching in a long haze all the way to the city of New York somewhere beyond the sunset—and he felt reassured by the thought of New York in its ring of sacred fires, the ring of smokestacks, gas tanks, cranes and high tension lines. He felt a current of power flowing through every grimy structure of his familiar street; he liked the figure of the young man above him, there was something reassuring in the way he worked, something that blended with the skyline.... Yet Mr. Mowen wondered why he felt that a crack was growing somewhere, eating through the solid, the eternal walls.
“Something ought to be done,” said Mr. Mowen. “A friend of mine went out of business last week—the oil business—had a couple of wells down in Oklahoma—couldn’t compete with Ellis Wyatt. It isn’t fair. They ought to leave the little people a chance. They ought to place a limit on Wyatt’s output. He shouldn’t be allowed to produce so much that he’ll swamp everybody else off the market.... I got stuck in New York yesterday, had to leave my car there and come home on a damn commuters’ local, couldn’t get any gas for the car, they said there’s a shortage of oil in the city.... Things aren’t right. Something ought to be done about it....”
Looking at the skyline, Mr. Mowen wondered what was the nameless threat to it and who was its destroyer.
“What do you want to do about it?” asked the young man.
“Who, me?” said Mr. Mowen. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a big shot. I can’t solve national problems. I just want to make a living. All I know is, somebody ought to do something about it.... Things aren’t right.... Listen—what’s your name?”
“Owen Kellogg.”
“Listen, Kellogg, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”
“You wouldn’t care to know.”
A whistle blew on a distant tower, the night-shift whistle, and Mr. Mowen realized that it was getting late. He sighed, buttoning his coat, turning to go.
“Well, things are being done,” he said. “Steps are being taken. Constructive steps. The Legislature has passed a Bill giving wider powers to the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. They’ve appointed a very able man as Top Co-ordinator. Can’t say I’ve heard of him before, but the newspapers said he’s a man to be watched. His name is Wesley Mouch.”
Dagny stood at the window of her living room, looking at the city. It was late and the lights were like the last sparks left glittering on