by Ayn Rand
"I merely wanted to ask you some questions about the Twentieth Century Motor Company which--"
"I shall be glad to answer any questions. I have nothing to hide. My conscience is clear. If you thought that the subject was embarrassing to me, you were mistaken."
"I wanted to inquire about the men who owned the factory at the time when you made a loan to--"
"They were perfectly good men. They were a perfectly sound risk--though, of course, I am speaking in human terms, not in the terms of cold cash, which you are accustomed to expect from bankers. I granted them the loan for the purchase of that factory, because they needed the money. If people needed money, that was enough for me. Need was my standard, Miss Taggart. Need, not greed. My father and grandfather built up the Community National Bank just to amass a fortune for themselves. I placed their fortune in the service of a higher ideal. I did not sit on piles of money and demand collateral from poor people who needed loans. The heart was my collateral. Of course, I do not expect anyone in this materialistic country to understand me. The rewards I got were not of a kind that people of your class, Miss Taggart, would appreciate. The people who used to sit in front of my desk at the bank, did not sit as you do, Miss Taggart. They were humble, uncertain, worn with care, afraid to speak. My rewards were the tears of gratitude in their eyes, the trembling voices, the blessings, the woman who kissed my hand when I granted her a loan she had begged for in vain everywhere else."
"Will you please tell me the names of the men who owned the motor factory?"
"That factory was essential to the region, absolutely essential. I was perfectly justified in granting that loan. It provided employment for thousands of workers who had no other means of livelihood."
"Did you know any of the people who worked in the factory?"
"Certainly. I knew them all. It was men that interested me, not machines. I was concerned with the human side of industry, not the cash-register side."
She leaned eagerly across the desk. "Did you know any of the engineers who worked there?"
"The engineers? No, no. I was much more democratic than that. It's the real workers that interested me. The common men. They all knew me by sight. I used to come into the shops and they would wave and shout, 'Hello, Gene.' That's what they called me--Gene. But I'm sure this is of no interest to you. It's past history. Now if you really came to Washington in order to talk to me about your railroad"--he straightened up briskly, the bomber-plane pose returning--"I don't know whether I can promise you any special consideration, inasmuch as I must hold the national welfare above any private privileges or interests which--"
"I didn't come to talk to you about my railroad," she said, looking at him in bewilderment. "I have no desire to talk to you about my railroad."
"No?" He sounded disappointed.
"No. I came for information about the motor factory. Could you possibly recall the names of any of the engineers who worked there?"
"I don't believe I ever inquired about their names. I wasn't concerned with the parasites of office and laboratory. I was concerned with the real workers--the men of calloused hands who keep a factory going. They were my friends."
"Can you give me a few of their names? Any names, of anyone who worked there?"
"My dear Miss Taggart, it was so long ago, there were thousands of them, how can I remember?"
"Can't you recall one, any one?"
"I certainly cannot. So many people have always filled my life that I can't be expected to recall individual drops in the ocean."
"Were you familiar with the production of that factory? With the kind of work they were doing--or planning?"
"Certainly. I took a personal interest in all my investments. I went to inspect that factory very often. They were doing exceedingly well. They were accomplishing wonders. The workers' housing conditions were the best in the country. I saw lace curtains at every window and flowers on the window sills. Every home had a plot of ground for a garden. They had built a new schoolhouse for the children."
"Did you know anything about the work of the factory's research laboratory?"
"Yes, yes, they had a wonderful research laboratory, very advanced, very dynamic, with forward vision and great plans."
"Do you ... remember hearing anything about... any plans to produce a new type of motor?"
"Motor? What motor, Miss Taggart? I had no time for details. My objective was social progress, universal prosperity, human brotherhood and love. Love, Miss Taggart. That is the key to everything. If men learned to love one another, it would solve all their problems."
She turned away, not to see the damp movements of his mouth.
A chunk of stone with Egyptian hieroglyphs lay on a pedestal in a corner of the office--the statue of a Hindu goddess with six spider arms stood in a niche--and a huge graph of bewildering mathematical detail, like the sales chart of a mail-order house, hung on the wall.
"Therefore, if you're thinking of your railroad, Miss Taggart--as, of course, you are, in view of certain possible developments--I must point out to you that although the welfare of the country is my first consideration, to which I would not hesitate to sacrifice anyone's profits, still, I have never closed my ears to a plea for mercy and--"
She looked at him and understood what it was that he wanted from her, what sort of motive kept him going.
"I don't wish to discuss my railroad," she said, fighting to keep her voice monotonously flat, while she wanted to scream in revulsion. "Anything you have to say on the subject, you will please say it to my brother, Mr. James Taggart."
"I'd think that at a time like this you wouldn't want to pass up a rare opportunity to plead your case before--"
"Have you preserved any records pertaining to the motor factory?" She sat straight, her hands clasped tight together.
"What records? I believe I told you that I lost everything I owned when the bank collapsed." His body had gone slack once more, his interest had vanished. "But I do not mind it. What I lost was mere material wealth. I am not the first man in history to suffer for an ideal. I was defeated by the selfish greed of those around me. I couldn't establish a system of brotherhood and love in just one small state, amidst a nation of profit-seekers and dollar-grubbers. It was not my fault. But I won't let them beat me. I am not to be stopped. I am fighting--on a wider scale--for the privilege of serving my fellow men. Records, Miss Taggart? The record I left, when I departed from Madison, is inscribed in the hearts of the poor, who had never had a chance before."
She did not want to utter a single unnecessary word; but she could not stop herself: she kept seeing the figure of the old charwoman scrubbing the steps. "Have you seen that section of the country since?" she asked.
"It's not my fault!" he yelled. "It's the fault of the rich who still had money, but wouldn't sacrifice it to save my bank and the people of Wisconsin! You can't blame me! I lost everything!"
"Mr. Lawson," she said with effort, "do you perhaps recall the name of the man who headed the corporation that owned the factory? The corporation to which you lent the money. It was called Amalgamated Service, wasn't it? Who was its president?"
"Oh, him? Yes, I remember him. His name was Lee Hunsacker. A very worthwhile young man, who's taken a terrible beating."
"Where is he now? Do you know his address?"
"Why--I believe he's somewhere in Oregon. Grangeville, Oregon. My secretary can give you his address. But I don't see of what interest ... Miss Taggart, if what you have in mind is to try to see Mr. Wesley Mouch, let me tell you that Mr. Mouch attaches a great deal of weight to my opinion in matters affecting such issues as railroads and other--"
"I have no desire to see Mr. Mouch," she said, rising.
"But then, I can't understand ... What, really, was your purpose in coming here?"
"I am trying to find a certain man who used to work for the Twentieth Century Motor Company."
"Why do you wish to find him?"
"I want him to work for my railroad."
> He spread his arms wide, looking incredulous and slightly indignant. "At such a moment, when crucial issues hang in the balance, you choose to waste your time on looking for some one employee? Believe me, the fate of your railroad depends on Mr. Mouch much more than on any employee you ever find."
"Good day," she said.
She had turned to go, when he said, his voice jerky and high, "You haven't any right to despise me."
She stopped to look at him. "I have expressed no opinion."
"I am perfectly innocent, since I lost my money, since I lost all of my own money for a good cause. My motives were pure. I wanted nothing for myself. I've never sought anything for myself. Miss Taggart, I can proudly say that in all of my life I have never made a profit!"
Her voice was quiet, steady and solemn:
"Mr. Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable."
"I never had a chance!" said Lee Hunsacker.
He sat in the middle of the kitchen, at a table cluttered with papers. He needed a shave; his shirt needed laundering. It was hard to judge his age: the swollen flesh of his face looked smooth and blank, untouched by experience; the graying hair and filmy eyes looked worn by exhaustion; he was forty-two.
"Nobody ever gave me a chance. I hope they're satisfied with what they've made of me. But don't think that I don't know it. I know I was cheated out of my birthright. Don't let them put on any airs about how kind they are. They're a stinking bunch of hypocrites."
"Who?" asked Dagny.
"Everybody," said Lee Hunsacker. "People are bastards at heart and it's no use pretending otherwise. Justice? Huh! Look at it!" His arm swept around him. "A man like me reduced to this!"
Beyond the window, the light of noon looked like grayish dusk among the bleak roofs and naked trees of a place that was not country and could never quite become a town. Dusk and dampness seemed soaked into the walls of the kitchen. A pile of breakfast dishes lay in the sink; a pot of stew simmered on the stove, emitting steam with the greasy odor of cheap meat; a dusty typewriter stood among the papers on the table.
"The Twentieth Century Motor Company," said Lee Hunsacker, "was one of the most illustrious names in the history of American industry. I was the president of that company. I owned that factory. But they wouldn't give me a chance."
"You were not the president of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, were you? I believe you headed a corporation called Amalgamated Service?"
"Yes, yes, but it's the same thing. We took over their factory. We were going to do just as well as they did. Better. We were just as important. Who the hell was Jed Starnes anyway? Nothing but a backwoods garage mechanic--did you know that that's how he started?--without any background at all. My family once belonged to the New York Four Hundred. My grandfather was a member of the national legislature. It's not my fault that my father couldn't afford to give me a car of my own, when he sent me to school. All the other boys had cars. My family name was just as good as any of theirs. When I went to college--" He broke off abruptly. "What newspaper did you say you're from?"
She had given him her name; she did not know why she now felt glad that he had not recognized it and why she preferred not to enlighten him. "I did not say I was from a newspaper," she answered. "I need some information on that motor factory for a private purpose of my own, not for publication."
"Oh." He looked disappointed. He went on sullenly, as if she were guilty of a deliberate offense against him. "I thought maybe you came for an advance interview because I'm writing my autobiography." He pointed to the papers on the table. "And what I intend to tell is plenty. I intend--Oh, hell!" he said suddenly, remembering something.
He rushed to the stove, lifted the lid off the pot and went through the motions of stirring the stew, hatefully, paying no attention to his performance. He flung the wet spoon down on the stove, letting the grease drip into the gas burners, and came back to the table.
"Yeah, I'll write my autobiography if anybody ever gives me a chance," he said. "How can I concentrate on serious work when this is the sort of thing I have to do?" He jerked his head at the stove. "Friends, huh! Those people think that just because they took me in, they can exploit me like a Chinese coolie! Just because I had no other place to go. They have it easy, those good old friends of mine. He never lifts a finger around the house, just sits in his store all day; a lousy little two-bit stationery store--can it compare in importance with the book I'm writing? And she goes out shopping and asks me to watch her damn stew for her. She knows that a writer needs peace and concentration, but does she care about that? Do you know what she did today?" He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes in the sink. "She went to the market and left all the breakfast dishes there and said she'd do them later. I know what she wanted. She expected me to do them. Well, I'll fool her. I'll leave them just where they are."
"Would you allow me to ask you a few questions about the motor factory?"
"Don't imagine that that motor factory was the only thing in my life. I'd held many important positions before. I was prominently connected, at various times, with enterprises manufacturing surgical appliances, paper containers, men's hats and vacuum cleaners. Of course, that sort of stuff didn't give me much scope. But the motor factory--that was my big chance. That was what I'd been waiting for."
"How did you happen to acquire it?"
"It was meant for me. It was my dream come true. The factory was shut down--bankrupt. The heirs of Jed Starnes had run it into the ground pretty fast. I don't know exactly what it was, but there had been something goofy going on up there, so the company went broke. The railroad people closed their branch line. Nobody wanted the place, nobody would bid on it. But there it was, this great factory, with all the equipment, all the machinery, all the things that had made millions for Jed Starnes. That was the kind of setup I wanted, the kind of opportunity I was entitled to. So I got a few friends together and we formed the Amalgamated Service Corporation and we scraped up a little money. But we didn't have enough, we needed a loan to help us out and give us a start. It was a perfectly safe bet, we were young men embarking on great careers, full of eagerness and hope for the future. But do you think anybody gave us any encouragement? They did not. Not those greedy, entrenched vultures of privilege! How were we to succeed in life if nobody would give us a factory? We couldn't compete against the little snots who inherit whole chains of factories, could we? Weren't we entitled to the same break? Aw, don't let me hear anything about justice! I worked like a dog, trying to get somebody to lend us the money. But that bastard Midas Mulligan put me through the wringer."
She sat up straight. "Midas Mulligan?"
"Yeah--the banker who looked like a truck driver and acted it, too!"
"Did you know Midas Mulligan?"
"Did I know him? I'm the only man who ever beat him--not that it did me any good!"
At odd moments, with a sudden sense of uneasiness, she had wondered--as she wondered about the stories of deserted ships found floating at sea or of sourceless lights flashing in the sky--about the disappearance of Midas Mulligan. There was no reason why she felt that she had to solve these riddles, except that they were mysteries which had no business being mysteries: they could not be causeless, yet no known cause could explain them.
Midas Mulligan had once been the richest and, consequently, the most denounced man in the country. He had never taken a loss on any investment he made; everything he touched turned into gold. "It's because I know what to touch," he said. Nobody could grasp the pattern of his investments: he rejected deals that were considered flawlessly safe, and he put enormous amounts into ventures that no other banker would handle. Through the years, he had been the trigger that had sent unexpected, spectacular bullets of industrial success shooting over the country. It was he who had invested in Rearden Steel at its start, thus helping Rearden to complete the purchase of the abandoned steel mills in Pennsylvania. When
an economist referred to him once as an audacious gambler, Mulligan said, "The reason why you'll never get rich is because you think that what I do is gambling."
It was rumored that one had to observe a certain unwritten rule when dealing with Midas Mulligan: if an applicant for a loan ever mentioned his personal need or any personal feeling whatever, the interview ended and he was never given another chance to speak to Mr. Mulligan.
"Why yes, I can," said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. "The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon."
In his long career, he had ignored all the public attacks on him, except one. His first name had been Michael; when a newspaper columnist of the humanitarian clique nicknamed him Midas Mulligan and the tag stuck to him as an insult, Mulligan appeared in court and petitioned for a legal change of his first name to "Midas." The petition was granted.
In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was a man who had committed the one unforgivable sin: he was proud of his wealth.
These were the things Dagny had heard about Midas Mulligan; she had never met him. Seven years ago, Midas Mulligan had vanished. He left his home one morning and was never heard from again. On the next day, the depositors of the Mulligan Bank in Chicago received notices requesting that they withdraw their funds, because the bank was closing. In the investigations that followed, it was learned that Mulligan had planned the closing in advance and in minute detail; his employees were merely carrying out his instructions. It was the most orderly run on a bank that the country ever witnessed. Every depositor received his money down to the last fraction of interest due. All of the bank's assets had been sold piecemeal to various financial institutions. When the books were balanced, it was found that they balanced perfectly, to the penny; nothing was left over; the Mulligan Bank had been wiped out.
No clue was ever found to Mulligan's motive, to his personal fate or to the many millions of his personal fortune. The man and the fortune vanished as if they had never existed. No one had had any warning about his decision, and no events could be traced to explain it. If he had wished to retire--people wondered--why hadn't he sold his establishment at a huge profit, as he could have done, instead of destroying it? There was nobody to give an answer. He had no family, no friends. His servants knew nothing: he had left his home that morning as usual and did not come back; that was all.