Hugh Akston
From Conservapedia
Hugh Akston, PhD, in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, was professor and chairman, Department of Philosophy, Patrick Henry University, Cleveland, Ohio. He resigned that appointment and joined the strike of the men of the mind called by John Galt, who had been one of his three favorite pupils and of whom he remained a highly trusted adviser.
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Background
The novel says very little about his background, and nothing about where he received his undergraduate and graduate training, the topic of his doctoral dissertation, or how and why he was appointed Chairman in Philosophy at PHU. But from every remark that Hugh Akston makes, one can safely infer that he was a consistent champion of reason in human thought, and held reason to be the highest form of thought. This was the lesson he strove to teach all his students.
Three favorite students
In or about 1912, three men from widely divergent backgrounds enrolled at PHU and announced their intention to pursue double majors in physics and philosophy. These three men were, of course, Francisco d'Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjold, and John Galt. Dr. Akston would say later that the most remarkable thing about these men, apart from their decision to pursue such a demanding double major, was that they could form such a fast friendship despite the differences in their upbringing. Francisco d'Anconia was a descendant of the earliest Spanish noblemen of the old Spanish Empire in Latin America. Ragnar Danneskjold descended from an aristocratic family in Scandinavia (though which country in Scandinavia, the novel never makes clear). John Galt was, as Akston would later describe him,
| “ | the self-made man, self-made in every sense, who came to our university penniless, parentless, tie-less. | ” |
Their love of reason united them, though each man also had a particular love that distinguished him from the other two. Francisco d'Anconia loved the earth and the things in it; Ragnar Danneskjold loved justice; and John Galt was the practical man, eager to see how things worked and figure out how to make them work better.
Shortly before their graduation, Hugh Akston's counterpart in the Physics department, Robert Stadler, made the fateful decision to endorse the establishment of what became the State Science Institute. Hugh Akston felt only pity for his friend and colleague. As nearly as he could tell, Robert Stadler believed that mind and body were somehow split, and that the purest exercise of the mind must divorce itself from "mere" practical application, on grounds that Stadler never specified and Akston never understood. John Galt was bitterly disappointed in Stadler, and let him know that in no uncertain terms.
Eventually the three students graduated. Hugh Akston might possibly have thought to see those three again, at class reunions. He never thought to be working as closely with them as he soon would.
The strike
In 1917 (the year that the strike most likely began; see Atlas Shrugged#Time setting for details), John Galt came to see his old professor, and told him a story that was as shocking as it was sad. Hugh Akston had seen some disturbing signs that the society in which he lived believed that reason was somehow out of style. But he was quite unprepared for the story that John Galt told him.
John had gone to work for the Twentieth Century Motor Company, in Starnesville, Wisconsin. There he had conceived, and build a prototype of, an electrostatic motor for automobiles, and potentially for railroad locomotives and even more powerful applications.
Then the factory's owner, Gerald "Jed" Starnes, had died. His children had taken the company over, and announced an appalling business and operations plan: to require all employees to work according to their abilities, but be paid according to their needs.
This was almost a direct quotation from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. To see it inaugurated at a business concern in the United States was the last thing that Hugh Akston would have expected. Naturally, John Galt quit the factory—and also wrecked his prototype and removed or destroyed key parts of his notes. But now John was telling Dr. Akston to realize two things:
- This was all of a piece with the other disturbing changes in a society that by then had declared the death of reason.
- The problem would get worse, not better.
John Galt said that he wished to "stop the motor of the world." To do that, he was going on strike, and calling upon all the creative minds of the country to do the same. The rules of the strike were simple: anyone having sufficient savings was to retire; any other person was to take the lowest job that he could find. Francisco d'Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjold had already joined him. Now John Galt was asking Dr. Akston to join him as well.
Hugh Akston could never argue with John Galt, and could not argue this point, either. He agreed with Galt that the world, having declared that it would get along without reason, needed to see how long it could get along without men of reason.
So he resigned his chairmanship and his professorship at Patrick Henry University, and moved west, to Wyoming. There he established a diner-type restaurant, put his name on it, and labored daily as a short-order cook.
Galt's Gulch
- Main Article: Galt's Gulch
The news of the "controlled run" on the Mulligan Bank, owned by Michael "Midas" Mulligan, in Chicago, Illinois, probably reached him through the usual channel: the newspapers. But later, John Galt came to see him at his diner, and told him that Midas Mulligan had bought a large parcel of raw land in a secluded valley in the Colorado portion of the Rocky Mountains. But what had begun as a private retreat for one frustrated and indignant striker, now had at least some of the features of a community. John Galt had, quite simply, built a very large version of his electrostatic motor in the valley to provide it with electric power. Someone else, presumably Midas, had drilled a water well. The upshot was that this valley was now an attractive place to build a home, and John Galt now said that he would like to see his old professor build his own house in the valley and to come and stay there at least one month out of the year.
Hugh Akston agreed, and John Galt flew him into the valley (this was the only means of access). What he saw impressed him. Still, he did not see how he could stay in the valley longer than one month out of the year, because at the time the valley did not have a thriving economy. But he built a home and agreed to visit the valley once a year, in June.
Dagny Taggart's Visit
Early in that year, a beautiful and very driven woman came to see Hugh Akston at his diner, asking after the inventor of the electrostatic motor. Her name was Dagny Taggart, and she was Vice-President in Charge of Operations for the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. Hugh Akston knew her by reputation, and did not take long to infer that she was trying to track down John Galt (whose name she did not know) through his association with his former superior, William Hastings. Hastings, as Akston knew, was dead, but his widow had apparently given Akston's name to Miss Taggart.
Hugh Akston tried, as gently as he could, to persuade Miss Taggart to break off her search. In the course of that conversation, he introduced himself to her. She was shocked to see a professor of philosophy working as a short-order cook. Without realizing that he might be giving her another clue, he told her,
| “ | Contradictions do not exist. If you find it inconceivable that the inventor of a new kind of motor would abandon his creation, or that a professor of philosophy would be working in a diner, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. | ” |
Development of the Gulch
Then came the lighting of Wyatt's Torch and the arrival in the valley of many brilliant businessmen who had been attracted to Colorado by its limited government, and then felt chased out of Colorado when the Federal government had issued a series of "directives" that destroyed Colorado's incentives. John Galt, of course, told these men to come to Mulligan's Valley, which the new arrivals and the long-term residence soon renamed Galt's Gulch in honor of Galt. They, of course, brought their skills with them, and soon had the Gulch organized with a very robust industrial and commercial economy.
Whether Hugh Akston finally closed his diner and established himself in the Gulch permanently, the novel does not say. But he definitely was in the Gulch in June of 1929 for another momentous event.
Dagny's crash-landing
That event was the uninvited and unplanned visit of Dagny Taggart to the Gulch. John Galt had come to the Gulch as usual, taking a vacation from his "regular" job as a track walker in the Taggart Terminal in New York City. He then had taken his personal aircraft and flown out to a small Colorado town, to recruit one Quentin Daniels, who had apparently been trying to reverse-engineer the electrostatic motor at Dagny Taggart's request. None of the residents of the Gulch would have predicted that Dagny Taggart would give chase to John Galt's aircraft, and continue to search for it after it had ducked under the refractor-ray screen, established at an elevation of 700 feet above ground level to provide a "mirror in the sky" and keep the valley hidden. Dagny Taggart's aircraft impinged upon the screen, and the rays shorted out her motor, causing her craft to drop like a rock. Happily, Dagny was able to get enough control of her aircraft so that when she inevitably crashed, she survived with nothing more serious than an injured ankle.
And so Hugh Akston saw Dagny Taggart for a second time. This time he introduced himself in relation to his former student:
| “ | I'm one of his two fathers—the one who didn't betray him. | ” |
The one who had "betrayed" John Galt was, of course, Robert Stadler.
Dagny remained in the Gulch during all of June. Hugh Akston saw her at numerous gatherings, and each time gave her more information on his favorite subject, which was his three best students and their life at college. A less-favored subject was why he had quit the world and joined John Galt's strike. He had done so, he said, because the world had declared the death of reason, a fact that continued to fill him with disappointment.
The unraveling
At the end of June, Dagny Taggart elected to return to her job with Taggart Transcontinental, to the disappointment of virtually every resident. But before the year was out, Dagny would be back, and to stay, as the outside society collapsed into anarchy. As old as he was, Hugh Akston probably did not participate in Ragnar Danneskjold's rescue operation to liberate John Galt from the State Science Institute. But he was definitely on hand for John Galt's eventual declaration that the strike was over, and the strikers had won, essentially by default.
Spoilers end here.
Typology
Hugh Akston's role in the novel is distinctly minor; it is, in fact, that of a witness, a role similar to that played by a chorus or a messenger in an ancient Greek play.
He is a type of the kind of professor of philosophy that Ayn Rand would have wished to see at a major university. As such he stands in stark contrast to the typical professors, with their warped values, that are seen today and had been seen at many universities for decades even before Atlas was published.
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