Chapter 3: The Top and The Bottom

The most expensive bar in New York City is located on the roof of the city's tallest building, but it's designed to feel like a dump in a cellar. Remember our buddy James Taggart and his incompetent friend Orren Boyle? They're having a shady meeting at The Top, and guess who else is there. Paul Larkin and Wesley Mouch, Hank Rearden's friend and Washington lobbyist, respectively. The purpose of the meeting is to take Hank down. They're mad that Hank owns the best iron mines in the country, and he keeps it all to himself instead of sharing. James agrees to get his friends in DC to deregulate Hank's mining interests, in the name of monopoly busting. Orren plans have the National Alliance of Railroads pressure the Phoenix-Durango Railroad into closing, which will eliminate Taggert's competition in Colorado. Paul and Wesley's roles aren't discussed, but they're obviously double crossing Hank Rearden.

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Dagny is in her office reminiscing on her rise through Taggart Transcontinental. She started working at a station when she was 15, while her brother James was given a cushy job in PR when he turned 21. She remembers the origin of the San Sebastian Line. Francicso d'Anconia was a Latin American billionaire who had never endured a failed business venture. He bought a huge plot of worthless land in Mexico, and months later named it San Sebastian, the largest copper mine in the world. James Taggart and Orren Boyle both invested millions of dollars into the project, site unseen. San Sebastian still isn't producing much copper, despite the entire world's assurances that it will start any day. Dagny threatened to quit when the San Sebastian Line was approved, but she stayed when she realized she didn't have enough power to stop it.

Back to the present, James is angry that Dagny has moved the worst equipment in the Taggart system to the SS Line. Dagny explains she has removed everything of value from the operation, in preparation for the takeover of the Line by the Mexican government. James calls this preposterous and demands she put better equipment on the SS. When she tells him to choose where which line should suffer for the sake of the SS, James' lack of a spine shows itself anew. He says he's going to tell the Board, and storms out of the office.

Dagny heads down to the Taggart Terminal to go home, and talks to a newsstand operator. He's a connoisseur of the world's cigarettes. He finds them so fascinating because cigarettes are controlled fire, so a man with a cigarette is controlling nature. He then bemoans the fact that most of the world's cigarette brands have disappeared, with only half a dozen remaining.

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Eddie likes to eat dinner in the employees' cafeteria at Taggart Terminal. Even though it's deep underground, it's designed to feel bright and open. He sits with the Mystery Worker, who often eats at the same time as Eddie. The MW is Eddie's sounding board, and they talk about all the craziness with Dagny, James and the San Sebastian Line. Eddie mentions that the new Rearden Metal tracks will be laid by Dick McNamara, the only contractor in the country who Dagny trusts. The MW asks about Dagny, and Eddie says she her life consists of work, sleep, and listening to Richard Halley's music at home.


***So, I'm usually pretty bad about paying attention to chapter titles, or track titles, or episode names. As soon as Rand started describing the cafeteria, I realized the title of this chapter was referring to the dichotomy between the dark and dank bar the magnates visit, "The Top", and the bright shining Taggart Cafeteria, "The Bottom". This led me to revisit the two previous chapter titles. Now I realize that "The Theme" is referring to the the theme of the Halley Concerto that Dagny hears early in the first chapter, and hums later on. "The Chain" is the bracelet of Rearden Steel that Hank made for his wife, and that she didn't exactly appreciate.