Unsanctioned Voice; Individualism and the Garrett novels; Harangue; Lincoln Steffens; Emma Goldman; Wobblies - IWW; American Omen; Rockefeller Center

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note , Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3, Chapters 4-6, Chapters 7-10 , Chapters 11 and 12 , Chapter 13 , Chapter 14 and Chapters 15 and 16 of Bruce Ramsey's Unsanctioned Voice.




Chapter 17 focuses on individual self-reliance and its relation to capitalism and Christianity. Ramsey expands on this focus with discussions of three of Garrett's novels - The Driver, Cinder Buggy and Satan's Bushel. Click here for the first part of my 2008 recap/review of The Driver, here for the beginning of my 2004/2005 recap/review of Satan's Bushel and here for part 1 of my recap/review of Cinder Buggy.

Ramsey discusses the Ayn Rand connection with The Driver, including alternative origins for the name "Galt." (p. 121, n. 4). My own belief is that there is enough Garrett material that influenced the Rand novels that the name "Galt" doesn't matter. Even if Rand got the idea for the name "Galt" from The Driver, there is nothing wrong with that. There was no plagiarism. Rand wrote very different books than Garrett, partially by building on some of Garrett's ideas and integrating those ideas into a philosophically-based plot.

Garrett, failing to foresee the plot of Atlas Shrugged, had written in 1913 that "Capital cannot strike." (p. 121, n. 4).

Ramsey writes that "The Driver is not a good novel." (p. 117). I am sure that it does not measure up to the classic fiction works of the past and would not hold the attention of a modern audience. But the story does have merit. The plot of an investor fighting to gain and remain in control of a struggling company despite attacks from all sides is compelling. Gail Wynand's struggle in The Fountainhead is more compelling because Rand was better at integrating philosophical issues into the plot. Modern fiction regarding large companies is spiced with sexual content and/or violence to appease modern audiences. But The Driver serves as an example where the plot turns on a company's value without relying on modern plot devices extraneous to capitalist considerations. Rand's plot elements were definitely based on capitalist issues, but also involved far deeper and more basic philosophical issues.

Ramsey quotes one noncommittal statement about The Driver from Bernard Baruch (p. 117), but Baruch also made a very positive statement here, in which he referred to The Driver as "one of the great novels of the day." Also click here for Time Magazine's review from March 17, 1923.

Ramsey barely mentions Cinder Buggy, except to say that it is similar to The Driver. (p. 117). I think Cinder Buggy showed growth, as the personal stories were more closely integrated into the capitalist message than in The Driver. Garrett did a better job of demonstrating the importance of the underlying industrial activity (iron and steel) and such activity's role in the history of mankind.

Ramsey also quotes Cinder Buggy on the issue of luck as it relates to individualism (p. 119) - a quote that I did not mention in my review. The quote appeared at a point where luck played a role in the advancement of the plot and the characters' fortunes (pp. 201-202 of Cinder Buggy). I had criticized the use of luck as a plot device without realizing that Garrett might have used the concept of luck to help explain individualism.

Ramsey quotes Weaver's speech from Satan's Bushel and compares Dreadwind to Mered from Blue Wound (pp. 117-119).

Ramsey provides clues to the roots of Garrett's economic beliefs (pp. 119-121), citing Herbert Spencer, Simon Newcomb and Francis Amasa Walker.

Garrett understood inflation as confiscatory theft based on his own reporting from post-WWI Germany. (p. 120). This writing shows how far down modern "conservatives" have sunk when they criticize this or that president for "failing to control" or "failing to stop" inflation.

Most importantly, Garrett understood that capitalism was not merely a "system" imposed upon a nation or a people, but was a natural part of life. Capitalism "grew out of life . . . gradually, and is therefore one of the great natural designs." (pp. 119-120). Reading even Ramsey's brief quotation from Garrett's writing is refreshing in light of modern conservatives who fumble in attempting to justify capitalism as merely the best among many "systems."

Chapter 18 begins with the statement that "[a]ll of Garrett's fiction is about work, industry and making a living." [p. 123]. [I made a similar comment in August 2007.]

Most of Chapter 18 is about Garrett's 1927 novel, Harangue and his fictional socialist takeover of North Dakota. Ramsey speculates that the title was conceived by the publisher, and that the subtitle (used as the title in the Saturday Evening Post serialization) was more descriptive. Ramsey identifies this subtitle as having come from the Book of Judges. [p. 123].

Ramsey identifies Harangue as Garrett's best novel. [p. 124]. Ramsey includes a more detailed description of the plot than he does for Garrett's other novels. [pp. 124-127]. Part of the plot overlaps real life events surrounding the Wobblies (IWW) [pp. 125-126].

Ramsey notes that Garrett's condemnation of socialism "lacks the bite" of his later attacks on the New Deal. [p. 127]. I have noted many times before that the New Deal would focus Garrett's writing. In the post-1932 world, Garrett wrote with the understanding that the battle against the New Deal was the only relevant issue.

Ramsey also discusses (and cites sources for) Garrett's association with Emma Goldman and Lincoln Steffens. [pp. 127-129]. Footnote 12 [p. 129] is one example that gives the reader some appreciation for Ramsey's task in ferreting out the various pieces of information that he would string together to create Unsanctioned Voice.

Chapter 19 focuses on American Omen and Garrett's travels around the United States. It begins with the sentence, "The 1920's was the last decade in which Garrett was optimistic about America." [p. 131]. I suspect that this statement applied to many people in addition to Garrett, although many people since the 1920's would display "optimism" about superficial matters far different than what Garrett marvelled at in the passages referenced in Chapter 19.

Ramsey focused on the portions of American Omen (1928) that described innovations in business training and management, the role of profit and the relation of technology to labor. [pp. 131-133].

The rest of Chapter 19 quotes Garrett's first-hand descriptions (in various articles) of American highways, Kansas City rail yards, Birmingham steel plants, California redwood forests and the softening effects of mild climates on the work ethic and ambition of the inhabitants. [pp. 133 - 137]. Much of this chapter has the feel of small portions of the old "Route 66" television series (without the drama). There was much about America that justified optimism at that time. Industry was growing and beginning to show its full potential. The changes in American life were visible and inspiring. Today, "urban explorers" seek out and examine the ruins and rubble that once created so much optimism before the government began its scorched earth policy of destruction known as the New Deal (and all that followed).

The chapter ends with curious quotes about the economic justification for skyscrapers in New York and the entire cities of Los Angeles and Wichita. Garrett speculates that these items were not economically motivated, but were created solely as a showcase for American economic power. The final quotation is from a 1929 Garrett article that applies this theory to Rockefeller center, which was under construction at that time. [p. 137].

Click here for a discussion of Chapter 20 and the shooting incident.

Unsanctioned Voice; The Driver; Coxey's Army; run on gold; Pullman Strike

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note and Chapters 1 and 2 of Unsanctioned Voice.

Ramsey spent most of Chapter 3 discussing two passages from the The Driver that he believes reflect actual experiences that Garret witnessed in person.

While The Driver was a fictional story, Coxey's Army was an actual group and an actual event. I spent little time discussing it in my blog of The Driver because it had so little impact on the plot. I wrote briefly of the political attitudes expressed during the march and how those attitudes fit the political discussion early in People's Pottage.

Ramsey (pp. 13-16) believes that Garrett was present at the start of the Coxey march in 1894 (he would have been 16). That the description is so detailed with so little relation to the rest of the story serves as evidence that Garrett was relating his own experience. Ramsey fit this scenario very broadly into the basic outline of Garrett's movements during that general period.

Chapter 3 also quotes at length (pp.17-19) from The Driver's description of a gold run on the U.S. Treasury during this same period. I quoted this passage here. Ramsey believes that Garrett witnessed this event in person because the description is similarly vivid and because he wrote about it previously in his columns in the New York Times and the Saturday Evening Post. See p. 19, n. 6.

Ramsey also discusses Garrett's presence at the violent Pullman strike of 1894. pp. 16-17.

Click here for a discussion of Chapters 4-6.

Bernard Baruch, Garet Garrett and The Driver

Click here and here for previous posts on Garet Garrett's association with Bernard Baruch (as well as references to Baruch's career as a Wall Street financier and presidential advisor).

Bernard Baruch read and reviewed Garrett's novel, The Driver. Next to the title page of my 1924 edition of Satan's Bushel, E.P. Dutton & Company placed some blurbs about Garrett's prior works, including excerpts from Baruch's endorsement of The Driver:

I feel as did Mark Sullivan, who said: 'Garet Garrett has written one of the great novels of the day.' . . . That is beside the point to one who wants to study man and his works. . . . The thing that impresses me is its fidelity to life.

Click here for my quotation of Time's 1923 review of The Driver.

The Cinder Buggy - part 11 - chapters XII and XIII - iron rails vs. steel rails

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of my review of The Cinder Buggy.

In Chapter XII, the iron vs. steel conflict took center stage. Steel was demonstrated to be more brittle than iron and thus more dangerous for rails. That iron would be less breakable than steel surprised me. I know that my understanding of metallurgy is incomplete, but I am still expecting some form of clarification later in the story.

Chapter XIII focuses on the economic benefits of steel. Rails made from steel are cheaper than those made from iron. This cheapness allows the railroads to extend to new areas. Civilization thus extends far beyond its previous boundaries, as food can now be brought great distances from where it is grown. (pp. 114, 120):

In a way that becomes clear with a little reflection, a surplus of steel caused a surplus of nearly everything else - food to begin with. There was a great surplus of food because steel rails opened suddenly to the world the virgin lands of the American west. The iron age had foreshortened time and distance. The steel age annihilated them.

p. 120

The consequences were such as become fate. They were tremendous, uncontrollable, unimaginable. They changed the face of civilization. Vertical cities, suburbs, subways, industrialism, the rise of a wilderness in two generations to be the paramount nation in the world, victory in the World War, - those were consequences.

p. 114

Aaron's speech (part 9, pp. 67 - 71) thus comes to fruition. But modern professors, bureaucrats, "journalists" and politicians think only of "exploitation of the worker," "American imperialism," "global warming," "obscene profits," etc. when they consider the consequences of the steel revolution.

Enoch and the iron industry fight steel. The fight is described in a sequence (pp. 121-122) that is eerily similar to the fight to stop Rearden Metal in Atlas Shrugged (although no language was copied). Steel is denounced publicly as unsafe. Public hysteria is aroused. Laws are passed. The difference in Atlas Shrugged is that Rearden Metal is superior to steel and iron in every way. The fight in Atlas Shrugged demonstrated the evil of government interference in the market. The fight in Cinder Buggy was merely an extension of the personal battles among the characters. (pp. 112-113). To the extent that Garrett made a deeper point, he was demonstrating the historic role of invention and progress in the survival and prosperity of mankind. Aaron's speech (part 9, pp. 67-71) seems to be emerging as Garrett's main philosophical point. It is a point that, while basic to the message of Atlas Shrugged, is far more simple and rudimentary than the themes that Ayn Rand explored (although far more complex and advanced than the history lessons that modern education and culture are capable of teaching today).

Garrett's more fundamental emphasis reflects Cinder Buggy's status as being written before the New Deal drew the battle lines between capitalism and anti-capitalism in every aspect of culture. That the importance of the discussion on pp. 67-71, 114 and 120 would be lost on modern Americans reflects 80 years of post-New Deal education.

The battles on pages 121-122 also demonstrate how fundamentally Ayn Rand's detractors miss the point. Rand's enemies accuse Rand of plagiarism because one of the main characters in The Driver is named "Galt," even though the plot of Driver differs greatly from anything Rand ever wrote. But those same detractors miss the great similarity between the Rearden Metal storyline and Cinder Buggy's iron vs. steel storyline. Perhaps if there was a character named "Galt," "Taggart" or "Rearden" in Cinder Buggy, Rand's simplistic detractors would have noticed Cinder Buggy (but probably still failed to recognize the similar subplots).

At the end of Chapter XII (p. 118), Garrett identifies the date as 1883 when the steel rail superseded the iron rail. But before New Damascus and the characters reach that point and that date, much is still left to happen in Cinder Buggy .

Click here to see part 12, as the conflict among the characters intensifies.

The Driver - Part XIII; Ayn Rand; Calumet K; Secret of the League

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 of my review of The Driver.

The Driver is many things. A casual observer will blast through its pages and conclude that it is simply a story about railroads - or a fictionalized account of the Panic of 1893 - or an Ayn Rand relic. In fact, The Driver is all of these things and more.

(1) I know of very few sources of information about the Panic of 1893 (aside from the standard high school history book obligatory anti-capitalist boilerplate). I know of no fictionalized account of this Panic (aside from modern speculation about the origins of The Wizard of OZ). By remembering and fictionalizing this event despite the passage of 30 years, Garrett gave to us and future generations something to relate to as we endure the events of 2009 (and beyond). Millions of Americans have no experience or other information to place today's events in context. Government schools have completely misinformed their students about all things economic and political. Americans find themselves adrift amidst current circumstances with no context and no framework to understand what is happening.

Most fictionalized accounts of the Depression of the 1930's focus only on poverty and misery as some sort of indictment of capitalism. The Driver differs from these standard stories by focusing on capitalism itself as a solution. The Driver differs simply by presenting a solution at all.

(2) In recent years, the Ayn Rand connection to The Driver has overshadowed the real importance of this book and other Garrett writings. Commenters miss the real importance of Garrett's books and articles while seeking some basis to attack Ayn Rand. The Wikipedia (!?) entry about Garet Garrett refers to The Driver as Garrett's "most influential work." This assertion is false, as that distinction belongs to The People's Pottage. Regardless of the relative merits of these books, People's Pottage is Garrett's most often quoted work. I have noted many references to People's Pottage over many decades among other writers. The Driver was unheard of in modern times until Bruce Ramsey published Salvos Against the New Deal in 2002. The anonymous writers at Wikipedia attribute undue influence to The Driver probably as part of a backdoor attack on Ayn Rand. The Randian angle is the context in which The Driver is usually quoted.

But these attacks are unfair. Even though one character has a similar name as in Rand's most popular novel and Garrett's plot involves similar business themes, the stories are not similar enough to cry "plagiarism," and there is no language that matches in both books (except for one famous line with completely different meanings and contexts). The similarities are more complex than I am explaining here, but not in a way that constitutes plagiarism.

Ayn Rand appears to have built upon Garrett's work and improved upon it with her own elements. Numerous fictional works contributed to Ayn Rand's writings, including Calumet K (Merwin-Webster, 1901) and probably Secret of the League (Ernest Bramah, 1907). Ayn Rand even wrote an introduction in 1967 to a republication of Calumet K. The tragedy of this situation is that Secret of the League and The Driver were never republished during Ayn Rand's lifetime. Had they been republished as was Calumet K, Rand might very well have endorsed those books as well and deprived the Rand-haters of ammunition.

Rand's words in 1967 regarding Calumet K could apply equally to The Driver:

But it has one element that I have never found in any other novel: the portrait of an efficacious man.

Calumet K, p i. (1993 edition) (emphasis in original)

Whether Rand did not consider The Driver's hero to be "efficacious" or whether Rand simply forgot having read The Driver some 45 years earlier is a matter for another article. The fact remains that Rand saw in Charlie Bannon (from Calumet K) the same features that exist in The Driver's hero and in the heroes of Rand's novels.

Those who attack Rand ignore Calumet K and Secret of the League because it becomes absurd to accuse a writer of plagiarizing the same story from three different books by three different authors. The proposition almost denies itself. Yet that is what Rand's detractors must do if they are to account for the contributions of all three books while maintaining their attacks on Rand.



Rand's plots also trace themselves to Rand's early works, including Red Pawn. One who reads Red Pawn, We the Living and The Fountainhead in succession (all Randian works) will learn the origin of the plots that Rand used in her later fiction. Such a reader would lose much of his appetite for finding mischief in the pages of The Driver.

While I disagree with those who use The Driver as a weapon against Rand, The Driver does have its place as an influence upon Rand's writings. Far from serving as some sort of smoking gun, The Driver is part of a larger picture. The Driver, Secret of the League and Calumet K deserve equal billing as early influences upon Ayn Rand, even though these books take a back seat to the plot development in Rand's own early works.

The attacks upon Rand do a disservice not only to Rand, but to The Driver and other works. The Driver deserves to be known as more than a weapon to use against Ayn Rand. Those who think of The Driver in this way marginalize the book and miss the novel's role as one of our few connections to the Panic of 1893. The Driver's Panic of 1893 backdrop is more topical in 2009 than at any point in recent memory.

The Panic of 1893 demands recognition, especially since the American government now uses today's crisis to advance its own political agenda. That Panic ranks behind only The Great Depression in historical importance when evaluating today's crisis. The Driver is our window into that Panic and the solutions that would serve us today in 2009 and beyond.

The proper role of The Driver today would not merely be historical, but inspirational. Rand was correct (in her Calumet K introduction) to point out the barren wasteland that constitutes modern fiction. Today's economic and political crises cry out for a fictionalized version that captures the essence of the moment. While there is no doubt that modern writers will write such stories using the old anti-capitalist boilerplate, such propaganda misses the point. We need new Garretts to fictionalize today's events so that the true context of the headlines will not be lost upon modern observers. Renewed interest in The Driver and Garrett's other works may help spark just such an effort.

The Driver - part XII - The Driver shows the way out.

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 of my review of The Driver.

In Chapter 15, the main character testified before a Congressional committee in the aftermath of the battle described in Chapter 14. He provided a lesson in free market economics and the true resolution to any panic/recession/depression. I provide some plot spoilers here because the following exchange provides lessons for today:

Q [from the committee counsel]: But you will admit that you are very rich? . . .

[The left has been against wealth for so long, they are finally getting their wish as the "very rich" are disappearing in our own time. Being rich is something one "admits" to, much like alcoholism or crime. - editor]

A: Yes . . . I suppose I am.
Q: Well, as briefly as possible, will you tell this Committee how you made it?
A: . . . . I'll tell you. I made it buying things nobody else wanted. I bought Great Midwestern when it was bankrupt and people thought no railroad was worth its weight as junk. When I took charge of the property I bought equipment when it was cheap because nobody else wanted it and the equipment makers were hungry, and rails and ties and materials and labor to improve the road with, until everybody thought I was crazy. When the business came we had a railroad to handle it. I've done that same thing with every property I have taken up. . . . . In the next twelve months the Great Midwestern properties will spend five hundred million dollars for double tracking, grade reductions, new equipment and larger terminals. . .
Q: . . . [D]o you realize what it means for one man to say he will spend five hundred millions in a year? That is half the national debt.
A: I know exactly what it means . . . It means for once a Wall Street panic won't be followed by unemployment and industrial depression. . .

pp. 269-270 (original edition)

In the decades since publication of The Driver, the government has rigged the game so that the above scenario could never rescue the economy:

1. The government will not allow prices to fall to the point where a risk-taking entrepreneur could purchase assets and make the best use of those assets. The current administration is, at this moment, trying to reinflate the bubble.


2. Regulatory burdens prevent companies and investors from making necessary investments like those set forth in our main character's testimony.


3. Tax burdens serve as a major disincentive against new investment. This is especially true for the taxes that will be needed to finance the spending bills of just the past few weeks.

The government has removed the "driver" from the economy. We are left with unfocused public "investments," limitless public borrowing and gradual devaluation of the currency. Entrepreneurs have been marginalized and blamed for the actions of the government. They have been taxed and regulated into virtual non-existence. It is no coincidence that with the "driver" in chains, a reference to 500 million dollars as "half the national debt" would now seem quaint. Public borrowing is no substitute for a driver.


Click here for part 13 (the conclusion).

The Driver - Part XI - the climax

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of my review of The Driver.


Chapter XIV of The Driver is the real climax of the novel. In this chapter, the main character's success, achievement and ability provoke the final conflict between the main character and various forces aligned against him.

This chapter will remind one of a much more simplistic version of Gail Wynand's battle to save his newspaper near the end of The Fountainhead, or the battles of various heroes in Atlas Shrugged. Lest Ayn Rand's detractors see another opportunity to cry "plagiarism," Rand's plots were much more intricate, complex and operated on a deeper moral and philosophical level.

Chapter XIV also operates as a more concrete version of Chapter 5 of Garrett's Blue Wound (1921) ("The Wages of Thrift"). That the theme of the successful man attacked because of his success appeared at all in Garrett's pre-New Deal writings reinforces Garrett's image as a prophet. That Rand explored, deepened and perfected this theme in numerous novels, articles and essays has provided moral support and fortitude to today's victims.
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See Part 12 - The way out..

The Driver - Part X - Panic of 1893; Grover Cleveland; Gold; the recovery.

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of my review of The Driver.

Pages 136 - 225 [original edition] of The Driver focused less on the Panic of 1893 and focused more the individuals and their fight to overcome the Panic and its consequences.

This portion of the book begins with a brief explanation of steps taken by President Cleveland to stop the run on gold. pp. 136-137. These steps occurred prior to the election of 1896 and the administration of President McKinley, events that I have credited with restoring the gold standard and putting the crisis to its final rest.

Much of the plot that follows in the next 90 pages describes the actions one man takes to reinvigorate one business following the Panic. If we are to benefit from any lesson of The Driver [and these 90 pages in particular], it is the lesson that panics are not resolved by government spending. They are resolved by the entrepreneurship of individuals. Individuals lead us out of hard economic times. Individuals rescue depressed businesses, take risks and buy into down markets. The individual is the true "driver" of the free economy. The individual is the driver of freedom itself. As a result, the individual is often also made the victim of those he has benefitted/liberated - as we shall see in upcoming parts of The Driver.

See part 11 of my review here.

The Driver - Part IX - a run on the U.S. Treasury - Panic of 1893

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of my review of The Driver.














Late in Chapter VI, Garrett describes a run on gold at the U.S. Treasury. In Part 7 of my review, I described the causes of the Panic of 1893:

A main factor in precipitating that crisis was the federal government's decree that Gold and Silver trade at parity with each other. The two metals were treated by Congress as equal in value, the laws of economics notwithstanding. "Naive trust in the power of words to command reality is found in all mass delusions." [p. 89].

The forced parity between the metals caused a run on gold, leading to a general credit collapse.

Garrett creates a fictionalized account of this run:

For several weeks uninterruptedly there had been a run on the government's gold fund. People were frantic to exchange white money [silver] for gold. They waited in a writhing line that kept its insatiable head inside the doors of the sub-Treasury. Its body flowed down the long steps, lay along the north side of Wall Street and terminated in a wriggling tail around the corner in William Street, five minutes' walk away. It moved steadily forward by successive movements of contraction and elongation. Each day at 3 o'clock the sub-Treasury, slamming its doors, cut off the monster's head. Each morning at 10 o'clock there was a new and hungrier head waiting to push its way in the instant the doors opened. Its food was gold and nothing else, for it lived there night and day. . . . . . It grew. Steadily it ate its way deeper into the nation's gold reserve, and there was no controlling it, for Congress had said that white money and gold were of equal value and could not believe it was not so. The paying tellers worked very slowly to gain time. . . . . the officers of the sub-Treasury had just telegraphed to Washington saying they could hold out only a few hours more. That meant the gold was nearly gone. It meant that the United States Treasury might at any moment put up its shutters . . . . Never had the line been so excited, so terribly ophidian in its aspect. Its writhings were sickening. The police handled it as the zoo keepers handle a great serpent. That is, they kept it straight. If once it should begin to coil the panic would be uncontrollable. Particles detached themselves from the tail and ran up and down the body trying to buy places nearer the head. Those nearest the head hotly disputed the right of substitution. . . . In the tense babel of voices there came sudden fissures of stillness, so that one heard one's own breathing or the far-off sounds of river traffic. At those moments what was passing before the eyes had the phantastic reality of a dream.

[pp. 127-129]

This story provides background for the main plot. It may become a reality in our own lives as the government further devalues our currency in its attempts to wish away the fundamental problems in our economy.



The Driver is not a history lesson on gold or an economics essay. For a nonfiction treatment of the government's attack on gold during the New Deal (and some history of gold in the U.S.), see Garrett's "Pieces of Money" from the Saturday Evening Post, April 20, 1935 [reprinted as Chapter 7 of Salvos Against the New Deal].
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See Part X.

The Driver - Part VIII - Insider Trading

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of my review of The Driver.

Chapter V featured another Ayn Rand relic - a character similar in some ways (although not in name) to one of the main characters from one of Rand's big novels. Once again I will not say too much for fear of giving away the plot. And once again Rand's character enjoyed fundamental improvements in complexity and depth. Rand's character was more thoroughly integrated into the plot than Garrett's character.

In Chapter VI, the reader is treated to the drama from inside the corporate board room, as the reality of the Panic (of 1893) becomes undeniable. In the midst of the action, as the corporate directors meet to decide the fate of the railroad, Garrett includes a passage that would be almost unthinkable to modern investors:

There is no law forbidding a director to part with his shares when the omens foretell disaster. It is commonly done in fact in the anonymous mist of the stock market, only you never mention it. The convention is that all stockholders have equal rights of parnership. But as directors are the few who have been elected by many to act as managing partners, and since it is necessary for managing partners to have first access to all information, it follows from the nature of circumstances that they are inside stockholders and that the others are outside stockholders; and it follows no less from the nature of mankind that the outsiders invariably suspect the insiders of selling out in time to save themselves.

[p. 117]

Garrett could not know that he was describing something - "insider trading" - that would later become the scapegoat used by every political analyst as the New Deal and its stepchildren programs would careen from one economic disaster to another throughout the 20th century (and into the 21st). While Garrett discussed insider trading as an element of the Panic, he recognized that such trading was a result - not a cause - of the general chaos.
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Part IX - a run on the U.S. Treasury.

The Driver - Part VII - Panic of 1893

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and part 6 of my review of The Driver.

Garrett's focus on the Panic of 1893 can be better understood in light of a brief explanation of that crisis. A main factor in precipitating that crisis was the federal government's decree that Gold and Silver trade at parity with each other. The two metals were treated by Congress as equal in value, the laws of economics notwithstanding. "Naive trust in the power of words to command reality is found in all mass delusions." [p. 89].

The forced parity between the metals caused a run on gold, leading to a general credit collapse. The story is more complicated, but the government's populist attack against gold (and previously against silver in 1873) was the root cause of the panic. The situation was not rectified until the government returned to the gold standard after the election of 1896.

Much of this information does not appear in The Driver except by passing reference.

There were other similarities with today's bubble. Just as today's elected officials have received favorable treatment from mortgage companies at the heart of the financial meltdown, "United States Senators were discovered speculating in the stock of corporations that were interested in tariff legislation, particularly the Sugar Trust." [p. 93]

Another similarity relates to Wall Street:

The name of Wall Street became accursed, not that morality was lower in Wall Street than anywere else, but because the consequences of its sins were conspicuous.

[p. 93]

It is always easy to blame "Wall Street" for the consequences of the government's currency devaluation.

A principle difference between the two crises can be seen in the solutions. While President McKinley returned the country to sound money, our government seems determined to devalue our currency to the point where U.S. Treasury bonds will be unmarketable. (This devaluation is in addition to increased political controls that will further cripple the economy, censor political opponents and ensure one party rule.) A century of currency devaluation has enshrined the power of mass delusion.

A by-product of the Panic of 1893 has been the lasting effect on American culture. The Driver's plot was based on the Panic. The Driver was one of many influences on the writings of Ayn Rand - writings that remain powerful and influential to this day.

Others have speculated about the influence of the Panic and the gold-silver controversy on the original book version of the Wizard of Oz in 1900. I have also read that the Panic, due to the rapid abandonment of newly built homes by suddenly insolvent individuals, created the legend of the abandoned, victorian haunted house that appears in so many movies, television programs and amusement parks. I will leave that speculation for others.

I will comment only that for the present crisis to have a lasting effect on our culture such that writers, readers and viewers in 100 years will see elements in fiction that grew out of this crisis, policies will have to change. We cannot bankrupt the United States and expect literature and culture to thrive in the future. Vibrant culture grows out of vibrant civilizations, not decaying, balkanized people mired in chaos over a destroyed currency. If the U.S. is reduced to a third world country, no one will remember the allegedly "historical" political events that have been celebrated in recent months, and no mythology equivalent to the Wizard of Oz/haunted house legends will emerge to commemorate our economic woes.
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Click here for Part VIII.

The Driver - Part VI - Economic nightmares and mass delusion.

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of my review of The Driver.

Chapter IV is entitled "An Economic Nightmare" and opens as follows:

You may define a mass delusion; you cannot explain it really. It is a malady of the imagination, incurable by reason, that apparently must run its course.

p. 86

Garrett was referring to the causes of the Panic, not some policy designed to "stimulate" the economy following the Panic. [Garrett writes often of 1894 even though the Panic is known as the Panic of 1893. Many of the consequences continued to be felt in 1894.]

Continuing on his theme of "mass delusion," Garrett writes of how people throughout history "have been mad together about a number of things, -- God, tulips, witches, definitions, alchemy and vanities of precept." [p. 87].

Leaving aside the issues related to the conflict between proponents of gold and silver, Garrett's words apply today as well as to panics of the past:

Either side was willing to see the government's credit ruined, as it very nearly was, for the vindication of a fetich. They did not know it. They had not the remotest notion why or how they were mad because they were unable to realize that they were mad at all. . . . . . Intelligence was in suspense. The faculty of judgment slept as in a dream; the imagination ran loose, inventing fears and phantasies. That the government stood on the verge of bankruptcy or that the United States Treasury was about to shut up under a run of panic-stricken gold hoarders was regarded not as a national emergency in which all were concerned alike, but as proof that one theory was right and another wrong, so that one side viewed the imminent danger gloatingly and was disappointed at its temporary postponement, while the other resorted to sophistries and denied self-evident things.

[pp. 87-88]

The discussion of gold and silver is instructive today for a people that have grown accustomed to paper dollars and the unspoken assumption that government paper has always been the only medium of exchange. But the discussion of mass delusion is even more instructive for those of us that wonder how the recent bubbles could have wrought so much havoc:

Delusions are states of refuge. The mind, unable to comprehend realities or to deal with them, finds its ease in superstitions, beliefs and modes of irrational procedure. It is easier to believe than to think.

[pp. 90-91]

Recent superstitions include the belief in 200 to 1 p/e ratios for stocks [1990's] and the notion that real estate prices would always rise [2000's]. Superstitions of 2008 and 2009 include the belief in "hope," "change" and "stimulus."

For five or six years preceeding there had been an ecstasy of great profits. The prodigious manner in which wealth multiplied had swindled men's dreams. No one lay down at night but he was richer than when he got up, nor without the certainty of being richer still on the morrow. The golden age had come to pass. Wishing was having. The government had become so rich from duties collected on imported luxuries that the Treasury surplus became a national problem. It could not be properly spent; therefore it was wasted. And still it grew. This time for sure the tree of Mammon would touch the Heavens and human happiness must endure forever.
Then suddenly it had fallen. . . . . The trunk was hollow. Everything turned hollow. People were astonished, horrified and wild with dismay. They would not blame themselves.

p. 91

If we are to survive our current crisis, we must remember how we survived past crises.
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Click here for Part VII - brief background on the Panic of 1893, its impact and how it was resolved.

The Driver - Part V - Ayn Rand relics and stock prices.

Click here for Part IV of my review of The Driver.

Chapter III of The Driver is heavily influenced by Ayn Rand relics. I will not identify them for fear of spoiling the fun of seeing them for yourself. The items that appear in Driver that foreshadow the Rand novels do not reflect poorly on Rand. Rand's plots were all her own, with only an element or two from prior novelists. Rand's novels were unique. She built on elements from prior authors, but she created something new and distinct. Ayn Rand's basic plot originated in Red Pawn during the 1920's, was repeated closely in Anthem and appeared in much more complex form (with many new elements and alterations) in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Rand's basic plot does not mirror the plot of The Driver (although the main character's battle in Driver featured some elements that would later appear in Fountainhead).

Much of The Driver involves the familiar drama resulting from the rise and fall of stock prices. At one point in Chapter III, a minor character remains notable for her silence until she asks a question that our own veterans of the 1990's stock market bubble (and its aftermath) will find very familiar - "What is the price of Great Midwestern today?" [p. 73]. This was no piece of casual dialogue. The near obsession of the characters with fluctuations in a stock price, especially in the aftermath of a general crash, has implications for our own times.

Other people have lived through stock market crashes in the past. They have sometimes found solutions instead of messiahs. Those solutions have become the subject of fiction and literature. While there is no magic solution in Driver, there is perspective.

The Driver - part IV - bankruptcy, railroads and Ayn Rand relics

Click here for part III of my review of The Driver. [Click here for parts I and II.]

Chapter II is significant for some quotations that remind us of the current economic situation and possibly foreshadow the result of current policies. [Remember that this 1922 novel was a fictionalized account of the aftermath of the Panic of 1893.][Remember also that I will not reveal the plot, but will try only to pick out items of interest to the modern reader.]

On page 34(original edition), as the main character walks through Wall Street, he hears two men arguing. "One seemed to be denouncing the government for letting the country go bankrupt. 'It is busted,' he shrieked. 'The United States Treasury is busted.'"

Another notable passage begins on page 40:

In the Middle Ages Europe might have advanced, with consequences in this day not easily to be imagined, but for the time and the energy of mind and body which were utterly wasted in quest of holy grails and dialectical forms of truth. So now in this magnificent New World, the resources of which were unlimited, human progress had been arrested by silly Utopians who distracted the mind with thoughts of unattainable things.

Take the railroads. With already the cheapest railroad transportation in the world, people were clamoring for it to be made cheaper. Crazy Populists were telling the farmers it ought to be free, like the air. Prejudice against railroads was amazing, irrational and suicidal. All profit in railroading had been taxed and regulated away. Incentive to build new roads had been destroyed. If by a special design of the Lord a railroad did seem to prosper the politicians pounced upon it and either mulcted it secretly or held it forth to the public as a monster that must be chained up with restrictive laws. Sometimes they practised both these arts at once. Result: the nation's transportation arteries were strangling.

In the above quote, substitute the health care industry in place of railroads and you will have a close approximation of the campaign of demonization that has served as a prelude to socialized medicine over the past several decades - and which may see its climax very soon. Most Americans do not remember similar campaigns of demonization against all of the major industries that now seek bailouts and without which we are told the economy cannot survive (and whose decades-long demise is now blamed on George W. Bush). If you cannot remember the official attacks on American industry, read any high school history book's discussion of "robber barons" or any "official" history of the American "labor" movement.

CCL&K Railroad track - 1890's - photo (c) William Duvall









The first of the major Ayn Rand relics appear in the latter half of Chapter 2. Follow the advice from the introductory comments to my review:

I will not reveal plot spoilers from the The Driver or what I call the various Rand relics that appear from time to time in the novel. Instead of trying to prove a point one way or another, simply enjoy each Rand relic as it appears. Consider yourself to be conducting an archeological dig, in which you unearth relics in the form of characters or events that presage some element of a Randian novel.

The Driver - part III; Garrett describes Wall Street in the mid-1890's; Trinity Church; Rector Street;

Click here for part II of my review of The Driver.

Chapter II of The Driver ("The Funk Idol") contains a few notable passages as the plot gets seriously underway. On pages 32 and 33 (original edition) Garrett's main character arrives on Wall Street and describes his new surroundings as of the mid-1890's:

Wall street proper, - street with a small s, - is a thoroughfare. Wall Street in another way of speaking, - street with a big S, is a district, the money district, eight blocks deep by three blocks wide by anything from five to thirty stories high. It is bounded on the north by jewelry, on the northeast by leather, on the east by sugar and coffee, on the south by cotton, on the southwest by shipping and on the west by Greek lace, ship chandlery and Trinity churchyard. It grew that way. The Wall Street station of the elevated railroad is at Rector Street, and Rector Street is a hand-wide thoroughfare running uphill to Broadway under the south wall of Trinity graveyard. When you are half way up you begin to see over the top of the wall, rising to it gradually, and the first two things uou see are the tombstones of Robert Fulton and Alexander Hamilton. A few steps more and you are in Broadway. Rector street ends there.
Trinity church is on the west side of Broadway, thirty paces to your left. Standing with your back to Trinity church door you look straight down Wall street, with a little s. All of this is Wall Street with a big S. You are in the midst of it.

I won't try to recount the changes since the events described in The Driver (or any changes that might have taken place between the 1890's and 1922). I will leave that task to those who inhabit Wall Street today.

Trinity Church (near Equitable building under construction) @ 1914 - Library of Congress photo














Much of the plot takes place on Wall Street in the wake of the Panic of 1893. The main characters of The Driver found their own solutions, which solutions formed the basis of the plot. Many readers might enjoy the contrast between the "solutions" to which we are about to be subjected in 2009 and the actions of the characters of The Driver. As I mentioned previously, I won't reveal the plot.

recent photo of Hamilton grave [photo by Malcom Rutherford]












For those who might be tempted to wonder whether Garrett mistakenly incorporated any of 1922 Wall Street into his description of Wall Street of the mid 1890's, note that he omitted such landmarks as the Empire Building (not to be confused with the Empire State Building), which did not appear at the corner of Rector and Broadway until 1897.
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Click here for part IV.

The Driver - part II

Click here for part I.

Chapter I ("Phantasma") of The Driver demonstrates a point that would later introduce Garrett's most famous work, The People's Pottage. I have written previously about the effect of the New Deal on Garrett's writings. The New Deal was the focal point of the American socialist movement. Prior to 1933, leftism in America was not backed by the power of government. The New Deal changed that. The New Deal turned leftism into a powerful and pervasive force that effects every area of our lives. More than any other factor, the New Deal turned leftism into "The Drumbeat." Garrett wrote about this transformation in the introduction to People's Pottage:

A time came when the only people who had ever been free began to ask: What is freedom?

Who wrote its articles – the strong or the weak?

Was it an absolute good?

...Since it was clear to reason that freedom must be conditioned, as by self-discipline, individual responsibility and many necessary laws of restraint; and since there was never in the world an absolute good, why should people not be free to say they would have less freedom in order to have some other good?

What other good?

Security.

What else?

Stability.

And beyond that?

Beyond that the sympathies of we, and all men as brothers, instead of the willful I, as if each man were a sovereign, self-regarding individual.

Well, where there is freedom doubt itself must be free. You shall not be forbidden to interrogate the faith of your fathers. Better that, indeed, than to take it entirely for granted.

So long as doubts such as these were wildish pebbles in the petulant waves that gnaw ceaselessly at any foundation, perhaps only because it is a foundation, no great damage was done. But when they began to be massed as a creed, then they became sharp cutting tools, wickedly set in the jaws of the flood. That was the work of a disaffected intellectual cult, mysteriously rising in the academic world; and from the same source came the violent winds of Marxian propaganda that raised the waves higher and made them angry.

Even so, the damage to the foundations might have been much slower and not beyond simple repair if it had not happened that in 1932 a bund of intellectual revolutionaries, hiding behind the conservative planks of the Democratic party, seized control of government.

After that it was the voice of government saying to the people there had been too much freedom.

pp. 5-6 (1953 edition)

Why does this matter in a discussion of the The Driver? The Driver was written in 1922, 11 years before the New Deal began. Socialism in America constituted nothing more than the ". . . wildish pebbles in the petulant waves that gnaw ceaselessly at any foundation. . . " to which Garrett referred in People's Pottage. They were just beginning ". . . to be massed as a creed." Garrett would have no way of knowing that the revolutionaries would soon seize control of government.

The Driver reflected this 1922 perspective (even though the story took place beginning in 1894 - "Fourth year of the soft Money Plague" - p. 1). Chapter I is sprinkled with random pebbles of leftist references in the quotations attributed to bit characters:

But a great majority of them were earnest, wistful men, fairly aching with
convictions, without being able to say what it was they had a conviction of, or
what was wrong with the world.

[p. 17]

"They blamed the money power . . . . " etc. [p. 17].

These references provided only a small influence on the plot, but the very nature of this minor role for these references reflects the times in which Garrett wrote.

---------------------------------------------
Part III of the review of The Driver.

The Driver - part I - Introductory comments.

click here for E.H. Harriman's review in Time Magazine - 1923.

The Driver (1922) is interesting for many reasons:

• The book is known as an Ayn Rand "relic", as there were some similarities between Rand's books and the elements and themes of The Driver.
• The Driver focuses on economic cycles of "boom and bust." Many of the plot elements will sound familiar to those of us that lived through the stock market bubble of the 1990's.
• The Driver is Garrett's most orthodox novel. Most of Garrett's other novels were more allegorical in nature. The Driver contained a more traditional plot.

(1) While The Driver has been the subject of much speculation over the years as it relates to Ayn Rand, such speculation is only partially valid. Having read The Driver, I found numerous elements that the book has in common with Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, including one nearly identical character name and some generally similar characters and plot lines. But the main plot of The Driver is unique and no language is identical among Garrett's work and Rand's. Rand's novels contained unique plots whose basic structure can be traced back to Rand's early writings such as Red Pawn.

While Ayn Rand may have been influenced by Garrett, the plots of her novels were far more developed and intricate than those of Garrett. Rand's novels conveyed more themes and delved more deeply into philosophy.

I will not reveal plot spoilers from the The Driver or what I call the various Rand relics that appear from time to time in the novel. Instead of trying to prove a point one way or another, simply enjoy each Rand relic as it appears. Consider yourself to be conducting an archeological dig, in which you unearth relics in the form of characters or events that presage some element of a Randian novel.

(2) The Driver centers on the immediate aftermath of the panic of 1893. Garrett does not propose solutions or advocate a position. Instead, he dramatized the steps taken by private individuals to deal with the crisis as it was. Garrett focuses on the ups and downs of one railroad in the aftermath of this panic. Keep in mind that Driver was written years before the Depression and more than a decade before the beginning of the New Deal. The idea of a government solution to this type of situation was not yet ingrained into our minds as it is today. In The Driver, calls for extreme government action form the background, while individual action by the hero forms the main plot. I wrote about the change in Garrett's focus following the New Deal in my review of Blue Wound (and some of the comments).

The Driver deals in fiction with some of the themes of the nonfiction Bubble that Broke the World. The Driver is much milder because Bubble was written at the height of the Depression around 1930. Driver was written almost 30 years after the panic of 1893, 15 years after the panic of 1907 and just as the bubble that eventually brought us the Depression was beginning. We can only wonder how the plot would be different (and sharper) had Garrett fully understood the momentous events that were only beginning to take shape as he wrote Driver.

(3) As I have written before, Garrett's novels often took the form of industrial novels:

I note here also that Garrett often writes extensively about industry. The railroad industry formed the backdrop for The Driver. Cinder Buggy was labeled "a fable of iron and steel." Satan's Bushel focused on agriculture - specifically wheat.

The Driver featured an active plot full of action, dialogue and characters - much more so than Satan's Bushel or Blue Wound. But Satan's Bushel and Blue Wound were more thought provoking than The Driver. Many modern readers blast through The Driver and cry "plagiarism" against Ayn Rand without understanding Garrett's deeper meanings. That mistake can't be made with Garrett's other novels.

The Driver - 1922 edition



As I mentioned before, I will review the book without revealing plot spoilers or the Ayn Rand relics. Half of the fun of reading The Driver is discovering the relics on one's own. I will focus, instead, on the deeper implications for the business cycle, for history and for our own times.

Click here for part II.

Time's 1923 review of Driver; E. H. Harriman

From Time magazine's review - March 17, 1923

"The hero of this novel is a super-railroad magnate called Henry M. Galt. He is inferred to be a portrait or, more exactly, caricature — of E. H. Harriman. He is described as "a small man, weighing less than one hundred pounds, with a fretful, nagging body," who walks with "a bantam, egregious stride." The plot of the novel is the story of Galt's triumphs. Incident by incident they may be substantially paralleled in Mr. Harriman's career. First, a spectacular rise; second, reverses, foes, almost defeat; finally, triumph and death. Mr. Garrett has written many articles about Wall Street. What private sources of information he may have had access to is not known. But the book in general follows the broad lines of the great railroader's generally known career."

Harriman











Driver - 2007 Edition














previous - Driver - 1922 edition.
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update - introductory comments - Driver review.

Coming in 2008 - The Driver

1922
















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2005 Weblog Awards

This blog has been nominated for the 2005 Weblog Awards in the Best of the Rest category. This is the category for the smaller blogs that do not yet generate much traffic.



For those of you that have been directed here from the awards/voting page, this blog promotes the writings of early 20th century conservative writer Garet Garrett. I seek to rediscover conservatism's roots by reviewing Garrett's little known novels and, ultimately, Garrett's political essays during the New Deal.

Garrett has long been rumored to have influenced the writings of Ayn Rand. Many similarities exist between Garrett's novels, particularly The Driver, and various Rand novels and plays.

Garrett is enjoying a mini-renaissance lately due to the recent publication of various compilations of his Saturday Evening Post essays. You can find links to and descriptions of these and other works of Garrett throughout this blog.

The rules allow you to vote early and often, please do so here.