Taggart Transcontinental doesn’t have copper wire for desperately needed repairs. The copper shortage reaches crisis status when Francisco d’Anconia, on the hour and day that his company is to be nationalized, destroys every mine, piece of property, and bank account belonging to d’Anconia Copper. Nothing remains for the looters to expropriate. Francisco and the elite members of his staff disappear.
Philip and the Wet Nurse both ask Rearden for a job. He rejects Philip because of his incompetence. He says that he would hire the Wet Nurse if possible, but the Unification Board won’t permit him to do so. The Wet Nurse warns Rearden that his Washington superiors are planning to spring a new restrictive policy on Rearden, although he doesn’t know the details. The looters are slipping their men—thugs, not steelworkers—into Rearden’s mills.
The collapse of the economy accelerates under the rule of gangsters such as Cuffy Meigs. He sends thousands of freight cars needed for the Minnesota wheat harvest to a soybean project in Louisiana, which is run by the mother of a Washington politician. The Minnesota crops rot, meaning starvation for many in the coming winter.
One night, an emergency calls Dagny to the Taggart Terminal, where she sees John Galt standing in a group of manual laborers. After she gives the group its orders, she walks into the tunnels, knowing that he’ll follow. There, alone in the tunnels under the Terminal Building, Dagny and John Galt make love for the first time. He warns her that he’ll lose his life if she inadvertently leads the looters to him.
