Atlas Shrugged Part I, Chapter 7: The Exploiters and the Exploited (Part 3) - Who Really Exploits Whom?
This is Part 3, the final stretch of Chapter 7. And it’s one of those sections that packs about five emotional gut punches into forty pages. Dagny goes all in on the John Galt Line, Francisco breaks her heart (again), Rearden gets hit with the worst news of his life, and somehow the chapter ends on a note that actually feels like hope. Let’s get into it.
The John Galt Line Is Born
Dagny names her new company “the John Galt Line.” Jim is horrified. He thinks the name is vulgar, bad luck, beneath her. But that’s exactly why she picks it. Everyone uses “Who is John Galt?” as a cry of despair, a surrender. Dagny wants to throw that right back in their faces. She’s not giving up. She’s taking the phrase that symbolizes doom and turning it into a battle flag.
Jim’s lawyer starts talking about permits and permissions and red tape. And here Dagny channels her ancestor Nat Taggart, who reportedly killed a politician who tried to block him. She tells Jim flat out: keep your Washington people off my back, get me my paperwork, and do not let them try to stop me. She says she understands how Nat Taggart felt. And she means it.
This scene is pure Dagny. She drops the polished vice-president act and sounds like she’s talking to a construction crew. You can feel the energy coming off the page.
Dagny Asks Francisco for Money
Next, Dagny calls Francisco d’Anconia to her office. She needs fifteen million dollars to finish the line. She’s raised seven million against her own Taggart stock. She needs eight million more, and no bank will touch her bonds because the project is “too good.” That’s the insane logic of this world: a genuinely profitable investment gets rejected precisely because it’s solid.
So she asks Francisco to buy the bonds. And he refuses.
But it’s the way the whole scene plays out that gets you. Francisco comes in with a blank face. He knows what she’s going to ask before she says it. He begs her not to ask. And when she does ask, he says no. She tries everything. She appeals to their shared past, to the values they once believed in together, to the memory of what success used to mean to him. She even offers to crawl, to let him enjoy humiliating her, if that’s what it takes.
And Francisco, this man who pretends to be a careless playboy, grabs her hand and presses his face to it. For one second, the mask slips completely. He calls her “my love” and says he can’t help her. Then, just as fast, he snaps back into character and makes a crude joke about saying those words to other women.
I’ve seen people do this in real life. People who care deeply about something but have decided, for reasons they won’t explain, that they can’t act on it. The mask goes on. The deflection comes out. You’re left wondering what’s real and what’s performance. Dagny is left exactly there.
Before he leaves, she tells him the line will be called “the John Galt Line.” His reaction is wild. He actually screams “What?!” For the first time in the book, Francisco d’Anconia is genuinely shocked. He asks why. She says because the name frightens people, and she wants to fight whatever it represents. Francisco goes quiet and says, almost to himself, “He will” come and claim it.
That line gives you chills if you think about where the story is heading.
The Producers Rally
Dagny goes to Rearden’s office. And here the mood shifts completely. This is two competent people doing business, and it reads like fresh air after all the manipulation and games.
She gives him the official order for a Rearden Metal bridge. He signs on for a million dollars in bonds without hesitation. When she protests that he can’t afford the risk, he says he never asks others to take chances he won’t take himself. Then he says he expects to make a huge profit. And she’s going to earn it for him.
The bondholders list is great. Ellis Wyatt. Ted Nielsen. Andrew Stockton. Ken Danagger. These are real producers, people running real businesses, putting up their own money. Not because some government told them to, but because they need the line and they believe in it.
Wyatt sends a telegram saying the State Science Institute’s attack on Rearden Metal actually made him speed up his order for a 600-mile Rearden Metal pipeline. Danagger orders 8,000 tons of structural Rearden Metal for coal mines. The smear campaign backfired. The producers responded by doubling down.
Growing up where I did, this kind of solidarity among independent people was rare. The system was built to make you suspicious of anyone who succeeded. But here, these guys are investing in each other because they recognize quality when they see it. No committees. No five-year plans. Just people who build things betting on someone else who builds things.
Rearden’s Mother Pays a Visit
Then Rearden’s mother shows up at his office, uninvited, in the middle of all this. She wants him to give his brother Philip a cushy desk job at the mill. Not because Philip knows anything about steel. Not because he could contribute anything. But because he “needs to feel important” and wants “self-confidence.”
Rearden is genuinely confused. He keeps asking: but what could Philip do here? His mother keeps answering with feelings. He needs to feel wanted. He’s your brother. Rearden pushes back: “I hire men who produce. What has he got to offer?” His mother answers: “He’s your brother, isn’t he?”
They’re speaking two completely different languages. Rearden thinks in terms of competence and value. His mother thinks in terms of obligation and blood ties. She ends with a line that basically sums up the entire philosophy Rand is fighting against: “If a man deserves a job, there’s no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved.”
Rearden tells her he’s running a steel plant, not a charity. End of conversation. But that line from his mother sticks. It’s one of those moments where Rand makes the villains state their philosophy out loud, and you realize it’s not just fiction. I’ve heard versions of this argument my whole life.
The Equalization of Opportunity Bill
Right after, a small businessman named Mr. Ward comes in begging for 500 tons of steel to keep his harvester company alive. He’s a good man, fourth generation, solid business. But his steel supplier got absorbed by Orren Boyle, and Boyle doesn’t deliver. Boyle builds housing projects and makes PR films instead of, you know, making steel.
Rearden is working on getting Ward his steel when the news hits. The Equalization of Opportunity Bill has passed. It was pushed through the legislature in 45 minutes with no warning. This law means Rearden will have to give up his ore mines, his coal mines, everything except the steel mills themselves. Years of work, taken by a vote of people who have never set foot in a mine.
Rearden’s lobbyist in Washington, Mouch, has gone silent. The betrayal is complete.
But Rearden doesn’t collapse. Not yet. He looks at Mr. Ward and says: “Business as usual, Mr. Ward.” He picks up the phone and gets Ward his 500 tons. He cancels the copper mine option he’d planned, because he’ll need the cash. He sees his next appointment. He keeps going.
Only late at night, alone in his office, does he let the pain hit. And it’s brutal. He sits bent over his desk, unable to think, just feeling the weight of it. He thinks about his ore mines, the years of work, the blood and sweat. Destroyed by people who couldn’t pull a chunk of ore from the ground themselves.
But then something happens. While staring at the bridge blueprints, a new idea hits him. A way to combine a truss with an arch. A better bridge design. And suddenly he’s alive again, sketching on everything he can find, calling Dagny in the middle of the night: “Forget the looters and their laws! I’ve figured out a truss that will beat anything ever built!”
That’s how the chapter ends. Not with defeat. With invention. With creation pushing through pain. And honestly, after everything this chapter puts you through, that phone call might be the most satisfying moment in the book so far.
Previous: Part I, Chapter 7: The Exploiters and the Exploited (Part 2)
Next: Part I, Chapter 8: The John Galt Line
This is part of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (35th Anniversary Edition, ISBN: 978-1-101-13719-2). New posts daily.