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→Laws and customs
For example, when John Galt wished to take Dagny Taggart on a driving tour of the valley, he needed to secure a car, because he did not own one. (He didn't need to own a car in a place where he stayed only one month of the year.) So he asked Midas Mulligan for the use of his car. But he did not "borrow" that car in the usual sense; he ''rented'' it and actually paid a daily rental on it. Dagny thought that behavior strange, given that Mulligan, with his tremendous net worth, could scarcely realize a (to him) significant income by renting out his car for twenty-five cents a day. But Galt explained it as an example of "resting" from the constant stress of living in a society in which one's fellow citizens constantly demanded certain things of one and expressed no willingness to pay for those things.
For example, when John Galt wished to take Dagny Taggart on a driving tour of the valley, he needed to secure a car, because he did not own one. (He didn't need to own a car in a place where he stayed only one month of the year.) So he asked Midas Mulligan for the use of his car. But he did not "borrow" that car in the usual sense; he ''rented'' it and actually paid a daily rental on it. Dagny thought that behavior strange, given that Mulligan, with his tremendous net worth, could scarcely realize a (to him) significant income by renting out his car for twenty-five cents a day. But Galt explained it as an example of "resting" from the constant stress of living in a society in which one's fellow citizens constantly demanded certain things of one and expressed no willingness to pay for those things.
== Economy ==
The [[economy]] of Galt's Gulch began simply and grew more complex as the community grew more populous. At first it was, of necessity, agricultural. [[Francisco d'Anconia]] worked a mine in the Red Mountain Pass in anticipation of a larger economy to come. But aside from him, [[Midas Mulligan]] alone lived full-time in the Gulch at first. He said that he "stocked this place to be self-supporting." Specifically, he built a house, cleared some land, grew [[wheat]], and intended to raise cattle.
In November of the first year, [[Judge Narragansett]] joined the strike. Midas Mulligan invited him to come to the Gulch and live year-round. With this act, the truly ''co-operative'' economy began. Judge Narragansett raised chickens and dairy cows, and Mulligan kept growing and raising other agricultural products. [[Richard Halley]] would add fruit trees to the mix when he, too, obtained a year-round leasehold.
Thus from the beginning, the economy of Galt's Gulch could ''not'' support the strikers in their original professions. Richard Halley was the prime exception. Every summer, the strikers spent the month of [[June]] in the Gulch. During that time, Halley could give concerts to paying audiences. More broadly, the Gulch was a seasonal resort with an agricultural base. (The real-life town of Ouray, [[Colorado]], is itself a seasonal resort.)
But in the year of the destruction of [[Colorado]], Galt's Gulch ceased to be an exclusive seasonal tourist attraction. It gained a robust, year-round economy. Yet even in that economy, most residents of the town could not work in their own professions. A select few did: Francisco d'Anconia ran a mine; Andrew Stockton ran a foundry; Ken Dannager prospected for [[iron]], Thomas Hendrix had the nearly exclusive [[medicine|medical]] practice, and Midas Mulligan, of course, reopened his [[bank]]. Others could work their original professions part-time, but still needed a "day job." Richard Halley grew his fruit trees throughout the year, but kept his concert season every June until the strike was "settled." Kay Ludlow Danneskjöld opened a restaurant in the Gulch when the economy took off, but kept a season of her own, acting in plays that other strikers, who "retired" from writing for the stage, wrote for her.
Still others learned to do work that was far beneath their original training. Richard McNamara hired three of them:
* A [[professor]] of [[economics]] who taught that no economic actor (or society) could consume more than he or it produced;
* A professor of [[psychology]] who taught that [[human]] beings could think; and
* A professor of [[history]] who refused to teach the [[Communist]] theory of history, and instead taught real history.
John Galt recruited each man after he got one rejection slip too many. Life in the Gulch was attractive enough for them that they would take "blue collar" jobs. The economics professor, for example, became an electrical lineman. (The economist's wife, who took the Strikers' Oath separately, opened a bakery.) The other two learned to lay water mains and even to install plumbing and heating systems in the log cabins that the strikers built.
Most strikers became farmers and gardeners. (One, Calvin Atwood, formerly of the Atwood Power and Light Company, became a shoe cobbler.)
Midas Mulligan worked harder than he had ever thought he would, to help find jobs for John Galt's recruits. His motive was simple: a part-time, seasonal resident was a security risk. A full-time resident was not. In the last year of the strike, he informed John Galt that all but ten men became permanent residents.
The novel does mention that a number of children (the novel never says how many) lived in the Gulch. As John Galt explained to [[Dagny Taggart]], a family had a mutual trade and a mutual "payment." More to the point, John Galt had as his most strict rule that ''no adult could make a commitment to the strike in the name of another.'' Even husbands and wives must take the Strikers' Oath ''separately'' and ''independently.'' (This is probably why [[William Hastings]] spent the last two years of his life as a seasonal resident of the Gulch, and his wife never saw or heard of it until she would hear John Galt speak on the radio.)
Nevertheless, the Gulch did have a younger generation. The best two examples were the sons of the economist and his wife. The wife told Dagny Taggart that she came to the Gulch to raise her sons in an environment conducive to building ''real'' self-esteem. One may infer that the Gulch had enough children to let someone, possibly a "striking" teacher who refused to "turn her children into sniveling cowards," keep a school in the Gulch.
John Galt made no specific plan. He and his fellow members of the Committee of Safety let each adult make his own decisions. Neither Galt nor either of his two friends would have predicted, on the night they first met in a garrett walk-up in [[New York City]], that a mere twelve years would suffice to collapse the society of the [[United States of America]]. They were ready to "pass on [their] secret to the next generation."
That would become unnecessary. In April of 2020, Galt declared the strike settled. Then the strikers went out to build a new American economy, one that would operate by the basic principles by which they lived in Galt's Gulch.
== Immigration ==
== Immigration ==