Chapter 20

Chapter 20 — "The Sign of the Dollar"

TL;DR: Trapped on a stranded westbound train Dagny shares her dinner with a stowaway tramp who turns out to be Jeff Allen, last engineer of the Twentieth Century Motor Company — and through him she finally hears the full story of how the workers' "from each according to ability" experiment destroyed the company and how a young engineer named John Galt rose at the meeting and vowed "I will stop the motor of the world" — then, racing onward by air to reach Quentin Daniels before the destroyer can take him, she follows a strange plane down into a hidden valley in the Rockies and crashes.

Summary: Dagny's westbound train is sidelined indefinitely on a Nebraska siding under Directive 10-289 chaos. Walking the cars she finds, in the rear of an empty boxcar at a stop, a thin gray-haired stowaway. She brings him to her compartment and gives him dinner. He introduces himself as Jeff Allen, once a working engineer. Asked where he is bound he answers: nowhere, because the world he worked in is gone. Pressed, he tells the story she has been chasing for two thousand miles: he was an employee at the Twentieth Century Motor Company in Wisconsin when the founder died and his three children — Eric, Gerald, and Ivy Starnes — called the workers to a meeting and announced a new plan, "from each according to ability, to each according to need," to be administered by vote. The plan rotted everyone in it. At that meeting a young engineer rose, said quietly "I will stop the motor of the world," and walked out. The young engineer's name was John Galt. After Allen's story Dagny continues west by every conveyance she can find. At a small Iowa airfield she learns Daniels has just taken off in a private plane bound for an unknown destination, with another man at the controls. She gives chase in her own monoplane, follows the strange plane through the Rockies into a long valley between sheer peaks, watches it descend toward what looks like flat ground — and then, as she dives after it, the air over the valley shimmers and her engine fails. She crashes into pine and rock.

Key scenes:

• A long train at standstill on a Nebraska siding under a yellow prairie sky — passengers walking the cars
• Dagny in her compartment sharing a tin of food with the gray tramp Jeff Allen
• Allen's story of the Starnes meeting at the Twentieth Century Motor Company — flashback to a packed factory floor, the three Starnes heirs at a podium, hands raised to vote, a young engineer rising at the back
• Galt's quiet exit through a side door, never named yet to the reader
• A small Iowa airfield at dusk — gas pumps, a grass strip, two small planes, one taking off
• Dagny in her monoplane chasing a strange aircraft through Rocky Mountain peaks at sunset
• The shimmer above a hidden valley; engine failure; crash into pines

Characters present: Dagny Taggart, Jeff Allen, the Starnes heirs (in flashback: Eric, Gerald, Ivy), the young engineer John Galt (in flashback, unnamed at the time), Quentin Daniels (off-page), the destroyer (off-page, piloting)

Locations / settings:

• A westbound passenger train idle on a Nebraska siding — yellow prairie, summer dusk, dust
• A coach compartment — small lamp, two facing seats, a tin of food
• Flashback: the Twentieth Century Motor Company factory floor — overhead trusses, sawdust, hundreds of workers in chairs facing a podium with three Starnes children
• A small Iowa airfield at dusk — grass strip, gas pumps, one twin-engine plane lifting
• The Rocky Mountains in late sunset — sheer peaks, narrow valleys, dropping light
• A hidden green valley — pine, rock, shimmer of refractive air

Visual motifs: a tin of food shared in a single coach lamplight; a flashback factory meeting — hundreds of working men staring at three young inheritors at a podium; a small monoplane chasing another between vermillion-edged peaks; the air shimmering over a hidden valley; a small plane diving into pine

Emotional tone: confidential and devastating in the boxcar; mythic in the flashback; vertiginous and exhilarating in the chase; abrupt and disorienting at the crash

Confidence: high — the Jeff Allen narration of the Twentieth Century Motor Co. and the crash into the valley are among the most-cited beats in the novel; they end Part II.