AtlasShrugged|SectioN141
Dagny Taggart visits UnitedLocomotiveWorks to determine why they consistently fail to deliver the Diesel engines she ordered. The PresidentofULW talks for hours without answering directly or saying anything of substance. After returning to the office, EddieWillers informs Dagny that McNamara has quit without explanation. As Dagny walks home that night she sees the depravity that passes for popular culture: books and movies that trivialize what is glorious, demonize what is moral, and exalt what is base; people who act as if pleasure were a sin that one gets away with. Depressed, she returns home and listens the soul tonic of RichardHalley. While she listens, she recalls Halley's struggles as a young composer, his sudden success, and his mysterious disappearance. She sees in the newspaper that FranciscoDAnconia has returned to NewYork amidst a scandal in which a married woman tried to kill her husband so she could be with Francisco, who she identifies as her lover. Francisco says he came to New York to witness the farce - but it is not the farce people are led to beleive that he wants to witness.
- Setting
The offices of Taggart Transcontinental, New York in the evening, Dagny's apartment.
- Foreshadow
Dagny sees a precision machine tool anandoned and decaying in the UnitedLocomotiveWorks factory; abandoned not because it was valueless, but because the owners could not extract value from it. This foreshadows another discovery in an even less competent factory - a motor that is pricelss, but which is left abandoned by people who could not see its value.
The folowing characters appear in SectioN141:
Dagny Taggart
McNamara - Mentioned.