Where Have The Producers Gone?

In her 1957 colossus, "Atlas Shrugged", Balph Eubank, one of the Looters, believes that the time has come for an Equal Opportunity For Literature Bill to be enacted by the government. Eubank, an author who has written a number of books, none ever selling more then 3,000 copies, wants the act to allow for the publishing of but 10,000 copies of any book published. If this is done Eubank believes that people will stop buying trashy books and will broaden themselves by buying the work of other authors like himself. One of the characters in the room with Eubank, a girl in a white dress asks him what if more people want to buy a book and why shouldn't they be allowed to do so if it makes them happy? Eubank replies by stating that people are no longer entitled to be happy and that the new essence is to be unhappy and miserable.

Eubank and his fellow looters are determined to destroy the producers despite the fact that they are dependent on them. The reason for that dependency? They obtain value from the producers through the humiliation and ultimate destruction of those producers. The looters gain satisfaction from their acts of destruction and personal attacks holding themselves at a higher level because they serve humanity.

In the second half of the 19th century in America we had producers. We called them Captains of Industries or in some cases, Robber Barons. These were the men who took up the challenge to bring about a better and more prosperous world for all of us. Yes, there were hardships and greed, but these were the men who invested and ran the transportation industries, the large shipping lines of the Vanderbilts and the railroads of the Harrimans. They were the owners of steel mills, Carnegie and Schwab. Financial giants such as J.P. Morgan who lent money to the government to get us out of a financial panic. Then we have the likes of Henry Ford, who showed us the way to put together an affordable way of transportation for all men. Thomas Edison, the man who gave us light and song. Alexander Graham Bell, who opened the door of communications. The list of the great ones is almost endless. The question is where are they today.

Where is the Edison of today who will see to it that the lights will not go out on us? Where is the Harriman of today who will build us a transportation system across the nation or will we no longer cross the nation or fly out of it? Where is the Morgan who will finance the light transportation system that we need in the cities of America? Where is the newly designed automobile that is standard size, safe, and efficient? Where is the high speed rail line we need? Where is the new and efficient engine for the super sonic jets we want to move a people around the world?

At one time this nation built bridges. We constructed a trans-continental railroad. We built skyscrapers. We ran wire for the telegraph and later the telephone. We had intellectual greatness at our institutions of higher learning but all of that, for the most part, has disappeared. Indeed one can beg the question by stating that given all the regulations we have at all levels of government, could we even begin to think of a new trans-continental line? Our elected representatives and the environmentalists would stop it in its tracks.