Wesley Mouch Quotes

We have worked out a plan,” said Dr. Ferris too cheerfully, “which will solve the problems of the steel industry and which will meet with your full approval, as a measure providing for the general welfare, while protecting your interests and insuring your safety in a—” “Don’t try to tell me what I’m going to think. Give me the facts.” “It is a plan which is fair, sound, equitable and—” “Don’t tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts.” “It is a plan which—” Dr. Ferris stopped; he had lost the habit of naming facts. “Under this plan,” said Wesley Mouch, “we will grant the industry a five per cent increase in the price of steel.” He paused triumphantly.

What will happen to the thousands of my workers, suppliers and customers when I go bankrupt?” “You, Mr. Rearden?” said Holloway incredulously. “But you’re the richest, safest and strongest industrialist in the country at this moment!” “What about the moment after next?” “Uh?” “How long do you expect me to be able to produce at a loss?” “Oh, Mr. Rearden, I have complete faith in you!” “To hell with your faith! How do you expect me to do it?” “You’ll manage!” “How?” There was no answer. “We can’t theorize about the future,” cried Wesley Mouch, “when there’s an immediate national collapse to avoid! We’ve got to save the country’s economy! We’ve got to do something!” Rearden’s imperturbable glance of curiosity drove him to heedlessness. “If you don’t like it, do you have a better solution to offer?

Then, when the State Chief Executive of Minnesota sent a request to Washington for the assistance of the Army against the riots he was unable to control—three directives burst forth within two hours, stopping all trains in the country, commandeering all cars to speed to Minnesota. An order signed by Wesley Mouch demanded the immediate release of the freight cars held in the service of Kip’s Ma. But by that time, it was too late. Ma’s freight cars were in California, where the soybeans had been sent to a progressive concern made up of sociologists preaching the cult of Oriental austerity, and of businessmen formerly in the numbers racket. In Minnesota, farmers were setting fire to their own farms, they were demolishing grain elevators and the homes of county officials, they were fighting along the track of the railroad, some to tear it up, some to defend it with their lives—and, with no goal to reach save violence, they were dying in the streets of gutted towns and in the silent gullies of a roadless night. Then there was only the acrid stench of grain rotting in half-smoldering piles—a few columns of smoke rising from the plains, standing still in the air over blackened ruins—and, in an office in Pennsylvania, Hank Rearden sitting at his desk, looking at a list of men who had gone bankrupt; they were the manufacturers of farm equipment, who could not be paid and would not be able to pay him. The harvest of soybeans did not reach the markets of the country: it had been reaped prematurely, it was moldy and unfit for consumption.

I need the economy of the country as a whole,” Wesley Mouch kept repeating. “I need the production of a nation.” “Is it economics that you’re talking about? Is it production?” she said, whenever her cold, measured voice was able to seize a brief stretch of their time. “If it is, then give us leeway to save the Eastern states. That’s all that’s left of the country—and of the world. If you let us save that, we’ll have a chance to rebuild the rest. If not, it’s the end. Let the Atlantic Southern take care of such transcontinental traffic as still exists. Let the local railroads take care of the Northwest. But let Taggart Transcontinental drop everything else—yes, everything—and devote all our resources, equipment and rail to the traffic of the Eastern states. Let us shrink back to the start of this country, but let us hold that start. We’ll run no trains west of the Missouri. We’ll become a local railroad—the local of the industrial East. Let us save our industries. There’s nothing left to save in the West. You can run agriculture for centuries by manual labor and oxcarts. But destroy the last of this country’s industrial plant—and centuries of effort won’t be able to rebuild it or to gather the economic strength to make a start. How do you expect our industries—or railroads—to survive without steel? How do you expect any steel to be produced if you cut off the supply of iron ore? Save Minnesota, whatever’s left of it. The country? You have no country to save, if its industries perish. You can sacrifice a leg or an arm. You can’t save a body by sacrificing its heart and brain. Save our industries. Save Minnesota. Save the Eastern Seaboard.

It was no use. She said it as many times, with as many details, statistics, figures, proofs, as she could force out of her weary mind into their evasive hearing. It was no use. They neither refuted nor agreed; they merely looked as if her arguments were beside the point. There was a sound of hidden emphasis in their answers, as if they were giving her an explanation, but in a code to which she had no key. “There’s trouble in California,” said Wesley Mouch sullenly. “Their state legislature’s been acting pretty huffy. There’s talk of seceding from the Union.” “Oregon is overrun by gangs of deserters,” said Clem Weatherby cautiously. “They murdered two tax collectors within the last three months.” “The importance of industry to a civilization has been grossly overemphasized,” said Dr. Ferris dreamily. “What is now known as the People’s State of India has existed for centuries without any industrial development whatever.” “People could do with fewer material gadgets and a sterner discipline of privations,” said Eugene Lawson eagerly. “It would be good for them.” “Oh hell, are you going to let that dame talk you into letting the richest country on earth slip through your fingers?” said Cuffy Meigs, leaping to his feet. “It’s a fine time to give up a whole continent—and in exchange for what? For a dinky little state that’s milked dry, anyway! I say ditch Minnesota, but hold onto your transcontinental dragnet. With trouble and the riots everywhere, you won’t be able to keep people in line unless you have transportation—troop transportation—unless you hold your soldiers within a few days’ journey of any point on the continent. This is no time to retrench. Don’t get yellow, listening to all that talk. You’ve got the country in your pocket. Just keep it there.

She felt certain that it was not the country’s panic he wanted to stave off, but his own—that he, and Chick Morrison and Wesley Mouch and all the rest of the looting crew needed her sanction, not to reassure their victims, but to reassure themselves, though the allegedly crafty, the allegedly practical idea of deluding their victims was the only identification they gave to their own motive and their hysterical insistence. With an awed contempt—awed by the enormity of the sight—she wondered what inner degradation those men had to reach in order to arrive at a level of self-deception where they would seek the extorted approval of an unwilling victim as the moral sanction they needed, they who thought that they were merely deceiving the world.

Dr. Stadler felt certain that this small-time shyster had had as little to do with the Project as any of the movie-usher attendants, that he possessed neither the mind nor the initiative nor even the sufficient degree of malice to cause a new gopher trap to be brought into the world, that he, too, was only the pawn of a silent machine—a machine that had no center, no leader, no direction, a machine that had not been set in motion by Dr. Ferris or Wesley Mouch, or any of the cowed creatures in the grandstands, or any of the creatures behind the scenes—an impersonal, unthinking, unembodied machine, of which none was the driver and all were the pawns, each to the degree of his evil. Dr. Stadler gripped the edge of the bench: he felt a desire to leap to his feet and run.

Wesley Mouch came next. He spoke about social planning and the necessity of unanimous rallying in support of the planners. He spoke about discipline, unity, austerity and the patriotic duty of bearing temporary hardships. “We have mobilized the best brains of the country to work for your welfare. This great invention was the product of the genius of a man whose devotion to the cause of humanity is not to be questioned, a man acknowledged by all as the greatest mind of the century—Dr. Robert Stadler!” “What?” gasped Dr. Stadler, whirling toward Ferris. Dr. Ferris looked at him with a glance of patient mildness. “He didn’t ask my permission to say that!” Dr. Stadler half-snapped, half-whispered. Dr. Ferris spread out his hands in a gesture of reproachful helplessness. “Now you see, Dr. Stadler, how unfortunate it is if you allow yourself to be disturbed by political matters, which you have always considered unworthy of your attention and knowledge. You see, it is not Mr. Mouch’s function to ask permissions.” The figure now slouching against the sky on the speakers’ platform, coiling itself about the microphone, talking in the bored, contemptuous tone of an off-color story, was Dr. Simon Pritchett. He was declaring that the new invention was an instrument of social welfare, which guaranteed general prosperity, and that anyone who doubted this self-evident fact was an enemy of society, to be treated accordingly. “This invention, the product of Dr. Robert Stadler, the pre-eminent lover of freedom—

Wesley Mouch glanced at the ceiling. “Don’t ask me to talk to him again,” he said, and shuddered. “I’ve tried. One can’t talk to that man.” “I . . . I can’t, Mr. Thompson!” cried Chick Morrison, in answer to the stop of Mr. Thompson’s roving glance. “I’ll resign, if you want me to! I can’t talk to him again! Don’t make me!” “Nobody can talk to him,” said Dr. Floyd Ferris. “It’s a waste of time. He doesn’t hear a word you say.” Fred Kinnan chuckled. “You mean, he hears too much, don’t you? And what’s worse, he answers it.” “Well, why don’t you try it again?” snapped Mouch. “You seem to have enjoyed it. Why don’t you try to persuade him?” “I know better,” said Kinnan. “Don’t fool yourself, brother. Nobody’s going to persuade him, I won’t try it twice. . . . Enjoyed it?” he added, with a look of astonishment. “Yeah . . . yeah, I guess I did.

Wesley Mouch came from a family that had known neither poverty nor wealth nor distinction for many generations; it had clung, however, to a tradition of its own: that of being college-bred and, therefore, of despising men who were in business. The family’s diplomas had always hung on the wall in the manner of a reproach to the world, because the diplomas had not automatically produced the material equivalents of their attested spiritual value.

The John Galt Plan,” Wesley Mouch was saying, “will reconcile all conflicts. It will protect the property of the rich and give a greater share to the poor. It will cut down the burden of your taxes and provide you with more government benefits. It will lower prices and raise wages. It will give more freedom to the individual and strengthen the bonds of collective obligations. It will combine the efficiency of free enterprise with the generosity of a planned economy.

Then, when the State Chief Executive of Minnesota sent a request to Washington for the assistance of the Army against the riots he was unable to control—three directives burst forth within two hours, stopping all trains in the country, commandeering all cars to speed to Minnesota. An order signed by Wesley Mouch demanded the immediate release of the freight cars held in the service of Kip’s Ma. But by that time, it was too late. Ma’s freight cars were in California, where the soybeans had been sent to a progressive concern made up of sociologists preaching the cult of Oriental austerity, and of businessmen formerly in the numbers racket.

You’ve been equalizing sacrifice for over a hundred”—he stopped—“for thousands of years,” said Rearden slowly. “Don’t you see that you’re at the end of the road?” “That’s just theory!” snapped Wesley Mouch. Rearden smiled. “I know your practice,” he said softly. “It’s your theory that I’m trying to understand.

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.

The Union of Locomotive Engineers was demanding that the maximum speed of all trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty miles an hour. The Union of Railway Conductors and Brakemen was demanding that the length of all freight trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty cars. The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona were demanding that the number of trains run in Colorado not exceed the number of trains run in each of these neighboring states. A group headed by Orren Boyle was demanding the passage of a Preservation of Livelihood Law, which would limit the production of Rearden Metal to an amount equal to the output of any other steel mill of equal plant capacity. A group headed by Mr. Mowen was demanding the passage of a Fair Share Law to give every customer who wanted it an equal supply of Rearden Metal. A group headed by Bertram Scudder was demanding the passage of a Public Stability Law, forbidding Eastern business firms to move out of their states. Wesley Mouch, Top Co-ordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, was issuing a great many statements, the content and purpose of which could not be defined, except that the words “emergency powers” and “unbalanced economy” kept appearing in the text every few lines.

It was the chance conversation of two men somewhere behind her that came beating suddenly against her closed attention. “But laws shouldn’t be passed that way, so quickly.” “They’re not laws, they’re directives.” “Then it’s illegal.” “It’s not illegal, because the Legislature passed a law last month giving him the power to issue directives.” “I don’t think directives should be sprung on people that way, out of the blue, like a punch in the nose.” “Well, there’s no time to palaver when it’s a national emergency.” “But I don’t think it’s right and it doesn’t jibe. How is Rearden going to do it, when it says here—” “Why should you worry about Rearden? He’s rich enough. He can find a way to do anything.” Then she leaped to the first newsstand in sight and seized a copy of the evening paper. It was on the front page. Wesley Mouch, Top Co-ordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, “in a surprise move,” said the paper, “and in the name of the national emergency,” had issued a set of directives, which were strung in a column down the page: The railroads of the country were ordered to reduce the maximum speed of all trains to sixty miles per hour—to reduce the maximum length of all trains to sixty cars—and to run the same number of trains in every state of a zone composed of five neighboring states, the country being divided into such zones for the purpose. The steel mills of the country were ordered to limit the maximum production of any metal alloy to an amount equal to the production of other metal alloys by other mills placed in the same classification of plant capacity—and to supply a fair share of any metal alloy to all consumers who might desire to obtain it. All the manufacturing establishments of the country, of any size and nature, were forbidden to move from their present locations, except when granted a special permission to do so by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. To compensate the railroads of the country for the extra costs involved and “to cushion the process of readjustment,” a moratorium on payments of interest and principal on all railroad bonds—secured and unsecured, convertible and non-convertible—was declared for a period of five years. To provide the funds for the personnel to enforce these directives, a special tax was imposed on the state of Colorado, “as the state best able to assist the needier states to bear the brunt of the national emergency,” such tax to consist of five per cent of the gross sales of Colorado’s industrial concerns.

On the other hand,” said Dr. Ferris, “the ads for my book—oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t notice such things as ads—quote a letter of high praise which I received from Mr. Wesley Mouch.

Jim boasted that this had been the most prosperous six months in Taggart history. Listed as profit, on the glossy pages of his report to the stockholders, was the money he had not earned—the subsidies for empty trains; and the money he did not own—the sums that should have gone to pay the interest and the retirement of Taggart bonds, the debt which, by the will of Wesley Mouch, he had been permitted not to pay.

I can’t help it!” yelled Wesley Mouch. “I can’t do anything about it! I need wider powers!

Wesley Mouch glanced down at his sheet of paper, then said in a petulant tone of voice, “If you want me to go ahead, you’ll have to declare a state of total emergency.

He turned sharply to Wesley Mouch. “Wesley, under Point Four, we’ll have to close all research departments, experimental laboratories, scientific foundations and all the rest of the institutions of that kind. They’ll have to be forbidden.” “Yes, that’s right,” said Mouch. “I hadn’t thought of that. We’ll have to stick in a couple of lines about that.

It will end wasteful competition,” said James Taggart. “We’ll stop scrambling to beat one another to the untried and the unknown. We won’t have to worry about new inventions upsetting the market. We won’t have to pour money down the drain in useless experiments just to keep up with overambitious competitors.” “Yes,” said Orren Boyle. “Nobody should be allowed to waste money on the new until everybody has plenty of the old. Close all those damn research laboratories—and the sooner, the better.” “Yes,” said Wesley Mouch. “We’ll close them. All of them.” “The State Science Institute, too?” asked Fred Kinnan. “Oh, no!” said Mouch. “That’s different. That’s government. Besides, it’s a non-profit institution. And it will be sufficient to take care of all scientific progress.

Well, this, I guess,” said Fred Kinnan, “is the anti-industrial revolution.” “That’s a damn funny thing for you to say!” snapped Wesley Mouch. “We can’t be permitted to say that to the public.

The picture now is this,” said Wesley Mouch. “The economic condition of the country was better the year before last than it was last year, and last year it was better than it is at present. It’s obvious that we would not be able to survive another year of the same progression. Therefore, our sole objective must now be to hold the line. To stand still in order to catch our stride. To achieve total stability. Freedom has been given a chance and has failed. Therefore, more stringent controls are necessary. Since men are unable and unwilling to solve their problems voluntarily, they must be forced to do it.

Yes—openly. Honestly, if you will. I do not rob men who are tied and gagged, I do not demand that my victims help me, I do not tell them that I am acting for their own good. I stake my life in every encounter with men, and they have a chance to match their guns and their brains against mine in fair battle. Fair? It’s I against the organized strength, the guns, the planes, the battleships of five continents. If it’s a moral judgment that you wish to pronounce, Mr. Rearden, then who is the man of higher morality: I or Wesley Mouch?” “I have no answer to give you,” said Rearden, his voice low.

The nation which had once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor,” said Francisco d’Anconia in a press interview. But this was not printed. The only business boom, that winter, came to the amusement industry. People wrenched their pennies out of the quicksands of their food and heat budgets, and went without meals in order to crowd into movie theaters, in order to escape for a few hours the state of animals reduced to the single concern of terror over their crudest needs. In January, all movie theaters, night clubs and bowling alleys were closed by order of Wesley Mouch, for the purpose of conserving fuel. “Pleasure is not an essential of existence,” wrote Bertram Scudder.