The looters organize a systematic attempt to take over Rearden’s mills. They know that he won’t agree to the Steel Unification Plan. Rearden will reject the plan because it permits Orren Boyle to exist off of his effort while he goes bankrupt. The looters can’t afford to lose Rearden; they’re terrified that he’ll retire and vanish. Their plan to keep him working is simple. First they attach his funds, so he has no money with which to escape. Second, they threaten his family. If he “deserts” them, his family members will be punished. Not surprisingly, his family begs him to stay. Finally, the looters slip their goons into the mills and stage a riot, supposedly spurred on by Rearden’s rejection of a request for wage raises. With violence spiraling out of control at the mills, the looters will step in to protect Rearden’s safety by taking over his factory. Francisco’s presence quells the riot, defeats the looters’ plan and, most important, completes Rearden’s liberation from the looters’ grip. Rearden is now ready to join the strike. He’ll no longer lend his mind to the support of the looters’ system.
Rearden believes that his ill-advised slap in Dagny’s apartment has cost him Francisco’s friendship, but he finds that Francisco loves him too much to let that incident divide them. Francisco understands that, at some implicit level, Rearden has always trusted him. Francisco acted as Rearden’s protector from the start. He armed Rearden with the knowledge of his own inestimable moral value. He fought Rearden’s enemies for years by destroying his own company and not permitting it to serve those who would torment and enslave Rearden. He brushed off Rearden’s insults, understanding that they proceeded from Rearden’s limited knowledge and desperate desire to protect his allegiance to his mills. Finally, Francisco secretly accepted Rearden’s offer of a job as a furnace foreman so he could be there on the day when Rearden needed him in his final battle to liberate himself from the looters’ clutches.
Rearden knows now that he is right to love and trust this man the way he always instinctively has. In their relationship, Ayn Rand dramatizes the meaning of friendship between rational men. The relationship is based exclusively on values, not on duty or self-sacrifice. Francisco and Rearden both revere productivity and the mind’s ability to create prosperity on earth. Consequently, they deeply admire each other’s accomplishments. Rand insists that, if human beings dedicate themselves to achievement rather than to selfless service, all humans can have this type of relationship. Francisco and Rearden, both of whom have lost Dagny, have found each other.
