Editing 78-13-B4 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Among the arts or professions, actors--down through the years--
have lived with a false image that they are somehow lacking in what
might be called normal attributes. Plumbers have put up with the
stock jokes that they always forget their tools and the customer has
to pay by the hour while they make the round trip to pick up the
missing items. In the industrial world, utility companies rank high
on thee villain list. Always the myth prevails that they produce a
necessary item in a monopolistic manner, cheaply and easily and
extract a horrendous profit from the helpless customer.

I'll leave defense of actors and plumbers till another time and
plead the case of the utilities today. How many of us have stopped
to think that in this long era of inflation electricity is one of the
only major commodities that has gone down in price? Now before you
scream and say lo ok at my last month's bill, hear me out. We actually
pay less per kilowatt hour of electricity than we did 20, 30 or
50 years ago. Our bills are up because we use electricity for many
more things.

When I was a boy we cooked with a wood burning stove and kept
warm with a coal furnace. There was no air conditioning, we had an
ice box, not a refrigerator, and electricity was used only for lighting.
Now we shave, brush our teeth, watch TV, have all manner of electrical
tools--we even carve the Christmas turkey with an electric carving
knife. If it still costs as much per kilowatt hour we couldn't afford
the electrical gadgets that today we can't seem to live without.

And we aren't being ripped off by the producers of that electricity.
Just let me read you some figures from the report to the
stockholders of the Middle South Utilities, Inc. Last year the
company reported total operating revenues of $1,251,600,000. That
was a 25.7 percent increase over the previous year. More than a
billion-and-a-quarter dollars sounds like a good business and a 25
percent is something to cheer about.

The report, however, also shows operating costs of more than a
billion dollars, leaving a net profit slightly over $100 million
which figures out to $1.72 a share for the stockholders--six cents
less per share than they received the year before. Nevertheless, it
is a normal, respectable return. It is hardly a windfall or, as some
demagogues love to declare, "an obscene profit".

Fuel to generate the electricity cost more than twice as much as
the total profit, which makes another part of the report very
interesting. The stockpile of uranium which opponents of nuclear energy
say is a great threat to life on earth would be the fuel used to
generate electricity once we finished developing the breeding reactor.
The current administration in Washington, as you know, does not want
to continue its development. But that present stockpile lies there for
the taking. No one would have to find it, or go into a m1ne to dig it
out; it would meet our energy needs literally for centuries. It
represents a fuel value of between $10 and $20 trillion. I respect the
right of the opponents of nuclear power to dissent, but with that right
goes a responsibility to know what they are talking about. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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