I could not bear to read that whole monologue last night; I'm curious enough to give it a shot today, though. I've made it through two pages, I think. :-)
The argument the industrialists have for leaving the others behind is their willingness to blindly swallow what they were told by the leaders, rather than standing up to them. Dr. Stadler of the science institute is a good example; he knew what was being done in his name was wrong, but he was too spineless to stand against it. Now in reality, there will be little people who would be willing to stand up and fight--I suppose the various workers who abandoned the mills and the railroads in droves would fall into that category...nothing was said of their fate, except for the vagabond Dagny met on the Comet just before she crashed Galt's party--but in the fictional universe of AS, the people were lemmings who either went along or killed themselves (or were killed, like Wet Nurse), because they saw no other way to survive. In reality, I believe those who stood up to the powers that be would have been welcomed into Galt's clan. But like you said, Rand was trying to make a point, and to do that she painted things more extreme.
Re: I See What You Mean
The argument the industrialists have for leaving the others behind is their willingness to blindly swallow what they were told by the leaders, rather than standing up to them. Dr. Stadler of the science institute is a good example; he knew what was being done in his name was wrong, but he was too spineless to stand against it. Now in reality, there will be little people who would be willing to stand up and fight--I suppose the various workers who abandoned the mills and the railroads in droves would fall into that category...nothing was said of their fate, except for the vagabond Dagny met on the Comet just before she crashed Galt's party--but in the fictional universe of AS, the people were lemmings who either went along or killed themselves (or were killed, like Wet Nurse), because they saw no other way to survive. In reality, I believe those who stood up to the powers that be would have been welcomed into Galt's clan. But like you said, Rand was trying to make a point, and to do that she painted things more extreme.