Atlas Shrugged Part II, Chapter 6: Miracle Metal - Directive 10-289
This is one of the most chilling chapters in the entire book. And I say that as someone who grew up in a post-Soviet country where some of the ideas in this chapter weren’t fiction. They were Tuesday.
The Meeting
The chapter opens in Wesley Mouch’s office in Washington. He’s gathered the usual crew: James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Dr. Floyd Ferris, Eugene Lawson, Fred Kinnan the labor boss, and Mr. Weatherby from the Treasury. They’re all circling the same problem. The economy is collapsing. Business failures have tripled. Industrialists keep disappearing. And nobody has a plan that doesn’t involve taking something from somebody else.
Mouch keeps whining that he needs “wider powers.” Taggart wants drastic measures. Boyle wants subsidies. Kinnan wants more jobs created by force. Every single one of them is pointing at the others saying “you pay for it.” It would be comedy if Rand didn’t write it with such dead-serious precision.
And then Mr. Thompson, the Head of State, a man so mediocre that people can’t remember what he looks like, stands up and says cheerfully: “Go ahead, Wesley. Go ahead with Number 10-289. You won’t have any trouble at all.”
He leaves the room. And the real horror begins.
The Eight Points
Mouch reads out Directive 10-289. Eight points. I’m going to list them because they deserve to be read in full:
Point One. All workers are frozen at their current jobs. Nobody can quit, nobody can be fired, nobody can change employment. If you turn twenty-one, a government Board assigns you a job.
Point Two. All business owners must keep operating. No one can retire, close, sell, or leave their business. If you try, everything you own gets nationalized.
Point Three. All patents and copyrights are to be surrendered to the government through “voluntary” Gift Certificates. All trademarks and brand names are abolished. Every product gets a new generic name chosen by the Board.
Point Four. No new inventions, products, or goods of any kind can be produced. The Patent Office is suspended. All research labs are to be shut down.
Point Five. Every business must produce the exact same amount as the previous year. Not more, not less. Fines for deviation.
Point Six. Every person must spend the exact same amount of money as the previous year. Not more, not less. Fines for deviation.
Point Seven. All wages, prices, salaries, and profits are frozen at current levels.
Point Eight. Any situation not covered by the above points will be decided by the Unification Board, whose decisions are final.
There’s a line right after Mouch finishes reading: “There was, even within the four men who had listened, a remnant of human dignity, which made them sit still and feel sick for the length of one minute.”
One minute. That’s all the human dignity they had left.
What Hit Me
I want to pause here because when I first read this chapter, I had to put the book down. Not because it was badly written. Because I recognized it.
My parents lived under a system where you couldn’t quit your job without permission. Where the state decided what you produced and how much. Where patents belonged to the state by default. Where innovation was suspicious unless it came from an approved institution. Where prices were fixed and shortages were permanent.
Rand wrote this in the 1950s as a warning. She was describing something that already existed across half the world. The details are exaggerated for fiction, but the logic is exact. When you freeze everything in place, you don’t get stability. You get rot.
The Characters Show Their Cards
What makes this scene brilliant is how each person reacts.
James Taggart’s first response is basically: “Good. If we’re going down, let’s make sure everyone goes down with us.” Then he catches himself and switches to respectable language about “practical necessity.” But Rand already showed you the real motive. It’s not self-preservation. It’s spite. He doesn’t want the able to survive if the unable can’t.
Fred Kinnan, the labor boss, is the most honest person in the room. He openly says: “I’m a racketeer, but I know it and my boys know it.” He doesn’t pretend to care about the public welfare. He just wants to control the Unification Board because if there are no principles left, then it’s just a question of who has more votes. And he has the workers. He tells the others: “You built this world, not me. I’m just playing the game you set up.”
Dr. Ferris is the true villain of this scene. He’s calm, amused, and completely aware that the directive is about power, not economics. When someone asks who will object, he answers with a smile and no words. When Lawson worries about intellectuals protesting, Ferris and Kinnan both agree: intellectuals will fold. Put a few on the government payroll with loud titles and they’ll do your enforcement work for you.
And then Ferris names the one man who could stop them. Not by name at first. He calls him “the guiltless man.” The man who lives up to his own standards, who carries no shame, who will fight because he knows he’s right. That man, says Ferris, is their deadliest enemy.
He’s talking about Hank Rearden.
Dagny Walks Out
The scene shifts. It’s May 1st. Dagny wakes up in her office, reads the newspaper, and learns about the directive. Eddie Willers is the one who brings her the paper. “None of us wanted to be first to tell you,” he says quietly.
She walks to Jim’s office, throws the newspaper at his face, and says: “There’s my resignation, Jim. I won’t work as a slave or as a slave-driver.”
She retreats to a cabin in the Berkshires. She tells Eddie to tell no one where she is, except Hank Rearden.
Rearden Signs
Back at the mills, men are quietly disappearing. Tom Colby, the union foreman, quits first. He tells Rearden: “They’ve been telling us for years that it’s you against me, Mr. Rearden. But it isn’t. It’s Orren Boyle and Fred Kinnan against you and me.” That line is worth the entire chapter.
The Wet Nurse, the young bureaucrat assigned to watch Rearden’s production, comes to him and offers to fake reports so Rearden can overproduce in secret. When Rearden asks why, the boy says: “Because I want, for once, to do something moral.” A kid raised on relativism, suddenly grasping that some things are simply wrong.
And then Dr. Ferris arrives. The Gift Certificate deadline is tonight. Rearden must sign over Rearden Metal. It will be renamed “Miracle Metal” and anyone will be free to produce it.
Ferris’s weapon isn’t legal threats. It’s photographs. Hotel registers signed “Mr. and Mrs. J. Smith.” Proof of Rearden’s affair with Dagny. If he refuses to sign, they’ll destroy her reputation.
Rearden sits in silence for a long time. And in that silence, he has a revelation. The entire system works because it uses your virtues against you. Your love, your ability, your joy, your integrity. These are the levers they pull. If you were truly depraved, they’d have nothing on you.
He signs. Not because he’s broken. Because he won’t let Dagny pay for his mistakes. The chapter title, “Miracle Metal,” is what the looters rename Rearden Metal. They can copy the formula. But they’ll never understand what made it.
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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.