Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

There was no wood to burn, no metal to make new stoves, no tools to pierce the walls of the houses for new installations. In makeshift contraptions of bricks and oil cans, professors were burning the books of their libraries, and fruit-growers were burning the trees of their orchards. “Privations strengthen a people’s spirit,” wrote Bertram Scudder, “and forge the fine steel of social discipline. Sacrifice is the cement which unites human bricks into the great edifice of society.” “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.