Steel magnate Hank Rearden is one of the main fictional characters in Atlas Shrugged. A self-made man, he risked his savings and worked exceedingly hard to build a steel company that provided employment to scores of workers and that developed a new, stronger steel that would revolutionize the railroad industry.  His character represents the social and economic benefits of industrial capitalism. Rearden is eventually driven to walk away from his business and from society by a petty, arrogant academic/bureaucrat, who had never created one job and who embodied the envy at the root of socialism....