Lincoln Academy of Illinois

INTERVIEWS By STEVE SLACK

PRESIDENT Ronald W. Reagan will be the first U.S. president to be inducted into the Lincoln Academy of Illinois in recognition of public service which has "brought honor to the state in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln. " Reagan and four other Illinoisans will be awarded Order of Lincoln Medals on May 9 at the 16th Annual Convocation of the Lincoln Academy. The academy was founded in 1965.

The other 1980 Lincoln laureates are: civic and business leader Thomas G. Ayers, past president, chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison; University of Chicago nuclear physicist and 1980 Nobel Prize winner James W. Cronin; former U.S. Senator Adlai E. Stevenson III; and civic leader and social service volunteer John T. Trutter, vice president of Illinois Bell Telephone Company.

Gov. James R. Thompson, president of the academy by virtue of his incumbency, will present the medals. Academy officials were uncertain whether President Reagan would be present for his induction into the academy.

On special assignment for Illinois Issues, Steve Slack, reporter for The State Journal-Register, interviewed four of the laureates. The opinions of these distinguished leaders on critical issues to the state and nation begin on the next page.

Ronald W. Reagan 40th President of the United States

Ronald W. Reagan, elected 40th president of the U.S. in November 1980, was born in Tampico, Illinois, and grew up in Dixon where he attended elementary and high school. "Dutch" Reagan was graduated from Eureka College in 1932 with a degree in economics and sociology and interests in sports, dramatics and politics.

Reagan's Hollywood career began in 1937 after success as a sportscaster for radio station WOC in Davenport, Iowa. Though interrupted by three years with the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, his film career included 50 feature-length films as well as six terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild and two terms as president of the Motion Picture Industry Council. He went into TV as host of "General Electric Theater" and then of "Death Valley Days." He made his formal entrance into politics in 1965.

Elected governor of California by a wide margin in 1966, he retained his popular appeal during those troubled years and was reelected in 1970. He also served as chairman of the Republican Governors' Association in 1969 and was a member of the Presidential Commission Investigating the CIA in 1974-75.

Narrowly losing the GOP presidential nomination to President Gerald Ford in 1976, Reagan campaigned vigorously for the Republican ticket in the 1976 elections. In 1980 he won the GOP nomination and the U.S. presidency. His defeat of Democratic President Jimmy Carter was accompanied by Republican victories across the nation and signaled a major shift in the U.S. towards more conservative economic and foreign policies and a renewed faith in private initiative.

Reagan was to have returned to his home state April 1 to address a joint session of the General Assembly in Springfield. This visit was cancelled because of the attempt on his life two days before.

4/May 1981 /Illinois Issues

Thomas G. Ayers

A native of Detroit, Thomas G. Ayers was graduated from the University of Michigan and joined the Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison Corporation in 1938.

Over the last 16 years he has served as president, chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison. He is now chairman of the executive committee and a director on the board of several other corporations. He is also chairman of a number of civic organizations including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Board of Trustees and the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. In 1973 Ayers was named Man of the Year by the Chicago Urban League. In this interview he discusses the public image and future of the utilities industry.

FOR 7 YEARS as chairman of the board of Commonwealth Edison, from 1973-1980, Thomas G. Ayers has led an embattled industry, an industry that has managed to fend off the fate of the American railroads, managed to remain a public service in private hands.

His has been the kingdom of power, and its glory, tarnished in the public eye by ever-escalating costs and a wholesale reliance on nuclear technology, depends on ...

"Money. The critical thing about the utility business today is that you do not generate income sufficient to attract the kind of money you need in this business. Hopefully, [the industry] will get recognition of the importance of utility service to the life of a community and get rate relief."

Rate relief to the industry necessarily means higher rates for the customers, an undeniable and unavoidable fact of our age, Ayers believes.

The industry, he said, is hobbled by exorbitant capital costs and regulations that deny it the freedom to control its destiny. The only way to keep rates low, relative to other costs, is to give the industry the opportunity to take advantage of certain economies of scale.

Should the utility industry, then, be left to regulate itself?

"I'm not one of those who think any industry is that benevolent," he said. But he thinks the members of the Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulates public utilities, should be qualified: "It seems to me, that the job [on the Illinois Commerce Commission] requires a certain kind of background to do it successfully. Somebody who understands the importance of this kind of business to the life of the state. I do not believe he [or she] should be elected. We would be better served by a chief executive who appoints people who have those kinds of qualifications. You should try to attract those kinds of people to it and not those who have a bias and want everybody to just fight it out."

Ayers refutes the contention that the public distrusts the utility industry and deserves a commissioner specifically charged with watching out for the public interest.

"We regularly test the customers' views and we have never found a distrust," he said. "People don't like higher rates. But if you ask someone 'Would you like to pay more for this chicken?' they'll say, 'No, that price is plenty.'"

Who has the responsibility to help the poor who cannot afford to carry the cost of the industry's expansion?

"I don't think the industry does. Society does. It could be federal [help], it could be state."

Ayers also questions restructuring rate schedules to favor the household that uses less energy as a way to help the poor.

"It's a myth that poor people use less energy than the wealthy," he said. "The welfare family that has the television on 24 hours a day and is constantly opening the refrigerator door to see if anything has appeared uses more energy than the household where both parents work.

"If you set up to subsidize the small user, you're actually helping those in the best position to pay. You've got to be careful. I've always felt that some kind of energy stamp, like food stamps, would be a more equitable way of doing it."

An advocate of continued and expanded use of nuclear technologies for power production, Ayers said the supposed decline of nuclear power has been exaggerated.

"It's cheaper and would have the least environmental impact. The economy of a nuclear plant is in loading it up and keeping it running."

Ayers said he would continue to build coal-fired plants to augment his nuclear "base-load stations."

The utility business is a gamble. Ayers admits it. You project into an unknown future, conjure the habits of unborn generations.

"We're not all that confident we've got it figured out. There is no absolute truth. Suppose the electric car really took off. Just suppose. Where are you going to get the electricity?"

Or suppose solar technologies became extensively used? What would we do with the excess power capacity?

"I can't say absolutely we're right. I can only point to the direction of things. One has to work hard and try to do the best that he can. You use your best judgment and make a decision. You hope you've made the right one."

May 1981 /Illinois Issues/5

James W. Cronin

James W. Cronin is co-winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Physics. The prize was awarded to Cronin and Dr. Val L. Fitch of Princeton University for discoveries concerning the symmetry of subatomic particles. Born in Chicago, Cronin received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1955. After seven years as professor of physics at Princeton University, Dr. Cronin returned to the University of Chicago in 1971 to assume the duties of university professor of physics. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is recipient of both the John Price Weatherill Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1975 and the Ernest O. Lawrence Award in 1977.

PRESIDENT REAGAN'S "New Beginning" budget calls for deep cuts in the National Science Foundation, and so it is a kind of irony of Dr. James W. Cronin's life that he should win a Nobel Prize in physics at a time when his nation is pulling back from research funding. "Well, I think it says that the priorities of the nation are short-term rather than long-term. I don't think it's very farsighted at all. Basic research has led to so much of the progress of mankind. Sometimes indirectly."

Dr. Cronin believes the level of scientific research being carried on today outstrips the capabilities of private or industrial funding alone.

"A great nation ought to support active scientific work. I do not feel that people think it is unimportant. From time to time one finds oneself on a bus or having a conversation with someone and explaining what one does. Even if the listener doesn't understand exactly, very rarely does a person think the work is not important."

Finding a cost-benefit relationship between money spent on research and return on that money, in the form of new discoveries, places the research scientist in an awkward, perhaps untenable position, according to Dr.Cronin.

"This can be done only over a period of, say, 50 years. On a local time scale, it would be very hard to measure. Continuing research fosters a general intellectual basis that builds on itself. It's like passing the torch. The teacher teaches the student and sometimes the teacher has done nothing but inspire the student, who produces a new discovery." That teaching process is going on in institutions that Dr. Cronin feels are "doing rather well."

"I would like to see American universities become more demanding of the standards of what we call education. If there has been a decline, it's been partly the result of a legitimate concern about relevance. Relevance is hard to define, hard to put your finger on. If you tried to have an intelligent conversation with a college graduate about literature, this was easier done in the past than now. People, however, can perform very well if you expect a lot of them."

There is another irony to Dr. Cronin's life and that is that his own work, a discovery that cosmologists believe is fundamental to understanding the origin of the universe, comes at a time when so large a portion of our population is demanding equal time for the Bible in classrooms.

Dr. Cronin agreed this may be in part the result of a fear of scientism.

"But I think it's more related to ignorance, refusing to face certain scientific findings and fact. I can't find much sympathy for it. It is rather silly to insist that is is either Darwin or Genesis. We certainly don't understand how this whole thing [the universe] got started. One doesn't have all the answers for that. Reputable scientists say we don't understand everything and maybe in a higher system there are things taking place. . . . How can you evade the truth or the hope to find out the truth? Fear [of discovery] is harder to live with than knowledge of the facts. It seems to me that if one is a religious person, one would not despair at all. Man is a wonderment that should lead one, I think to religion."

6/ May 1981/ Illinois Issues

Adlai E. Stevenson III

The career of Chicago-born Adlai E. Stevenson III is in keeping with a family tradition of service to Illinois. An attorney, Stevenson received his law degree from Harvard in 1957. He has served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, as state treasurer and as U.S. senator from Illinois. Here, Stevenson, who decided not to run for a third U.S. Senate term, speculates on the reasons for the decline in the Illinois economy and on what must be done to reverse the trend.

ON ELECTION night in the fall of 1974, in the suburban campaign headquarters of U.S. Senate candidate George Burditt, his supporters had written — in derision — the name "StevenSON" on their vote tally board.

The reference to the former senator's lineage was, of course, quite intended. It no doubt helped sooth the humiliation and exasperation of Burditt's defeat by suggesting that they were battling fate itself.

The Stevensons of Illinois have ruled with benevolence and a curious mixture of delight and disdain.

Adlai III, who has left the U.S. Senate and has joined the Washington law office of Mayer, Brown and Platt, is being neither coy nor frank about his own political future. He appears to be a man who quite honestly does not know what is to become of him — of his state — of his nation.

"Can we do anything in this country? Can you do anything if one interest group opposes it? At the moment, the answer is negative."

At the moment, for the state, Stevenson prescribes more leadership. Not administrative leadership, exactly, but rather inspirational leadership, which translates into courage.

To inspire, he says, requires an ability to communicate with the electorate, honestly, frankly and passionately. And to lay out the options — even if the options are limited.

Still, how do you deal with an electorate who has never gone to the cupboard and found it bare of Rosy Future?

"How does the grassroots get the message? Hear the truth? That's the. toughest part for me. I'm not very good at communicating."

Stevenson's interest in the Illinois governorship has been the subject of much speculation. He is, at least, thinking about the problems of the state — the larger problems, the problems that have an immediate political return of zero — and feels strongly that the crises we haven't yet met will occur because of this leadership failure today.

"Unless you assume there are basic economic weaknesses or a people reluctant to work hard, what explanation is there [for Illinois' economic decline] except for a failure of leadership? It can be in Springfield. But it can be in Washington, too.

"The economic future of Illinois depends on its ability to develop its strengths instead of subsidizing its weaknesses. Those strengths are substantial and include the state's capacity for production of food, energy, capital and technology. They include its universities and the transportation infrastructure. And yet, the state is declining. I think the strengths may make Illinois as strong as any in the union. But it must adapt to change in a continuing process of renewal that transfers resources from declining sectors [like steel and automobiles] to growth sectors [like electronics]. That isn't taking place."

Stevenson is not, however, recommending a wholesale abandonment of the state's considerable — but aging — heavy industrial base.

"The diversification would include the transfer of surplus capacity for basic industries. We continue to subsidize steel and autos instead of developing the mechanisms for moving capital and people into the growth sectors."

Stevenson sees a potentially damaging trade war between the growing and declining sectors of the country and a tendency for public policies on the federal level to help those areas that need help least.

"We are all in this together. Everybody loses if the industrial base sinks."

The adversary relationship between business and government, Stevenson said, contributes to the state's and nation's stagnant economy. Business, he said, sees little return from the amount of taxes it pays and the amount of added costs fostered by government regulations. Consequently, the business community's message is simple: "Get government off our backs."

"We are getting clobbered by countries where business and government are in partnership. You learn from the winners," Stevenson said.

Giving business room to breathe, encouraging it to be inventive, creative and productive, means a transfer of funds from the public treasury to the private. And won't there come a crunch, as those people heretofore supported by the public sector are cut off?

"There will be. It's largely a question of how bad."

May 1981 /Illinois Issues/7

John T. Trutter

John T. Trutter is vice president for community affairs and employee information at Illinois Bell Telephone Company. He joined Illinois Bell in 1946 after graduation from the University of Illinois and four years of service as an Army officer in World War II. Trutter's astounding energy (he belongs to more than 30 civic organizations) is directed into promoting private sector responsibility for community betterment. In this interview he discusses the social responsibility of corporations.

IF THE WINDS have shifted, if the weathervanes that point out the direction of this country's public policies have swiveled, if the federal government says to the nation's poor and needy "Look no longer to me," where shall they go?

To the private sector, en masse, with hat in hand.

"From the hue and cry one hears these days, it's going to be," said John T. Trutter, vice president for community affairs at Illinois Bell Telephone.

"I see an enormous need for the private sector to pick up the slack. The corporations and the corporate managers have an obligation to help their communities. I know there are some viewpoints. At least one noted economist has said that the corporation has only the obligation to make a profit. I strongly disagree. With the social problems that face all of us, I don't see how a corporation can make a profit without helping them."

Trutter is president of the Children's Home and Aid Society of Illinois, a national trustee of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, chairman of the board of United Cerebral Palsy, vice-president of the Chicago Crime Commission, past president of the Hull House Association and has served as an officer in numerous other civic organizations.

"I have very strong feelings about community responsibility. I can't show much support for people who don't try to do something that makes an area better because they've been there."

Indeed, Trutter feels the private sector is better equipped and better able to administer social policy.

"Many companies are doing quite a bit already. Let me give you an example of how it's in our best interest. We have a problem in education, turning out the kind of quality product we have in the past. This is particularly true in the Chicago metropolitan area. The business community has taken on the role of trying to improve the educational system. We benefit from this in having a higher quality, better graduate to hire. If we didn't help, we'd have to spend that same money in retraining them."

If you grant that the obligation is there, will corporate coffers open up, can private foundations handle the load?

"The public expects us to," Trutter said. "There's going to be a crunch in how much more we can do. There's going to be a time when some agencies that are doing the same kinds of things will have to consolidate to be more efficient and better use the scarce funds. You can't leave it all up to government, and we have the business expertise to do it. And there are various ways the government can encourage corporations to take on the role.

"We've always had poverty, and in spite of our best efforts we always will. From my own experience ... I see ways we can get people to help themselves — we can help teach people how to better handle their finances and better deal with law enforcement. Many of the government programs have been good. It's just that by the time the tax money gets back to the streets, it's had an awful deduction. The upward mobility for people is far better now, and we have traditions in the country that are very positive.

"I'm not that gloomy about the picture. The gap is narrowing."

8/May 1981 /Illinois Issues