Beginning with this issue, Commitment accepts the long-term challenge laid down to American business:

Corporations must do a better job of speaking out... they must give a better understanding of the free market and its benefits.... of the economic and regulatory pressures corporations face ... and their ultimate effect on the individual's economic and personal freedom.

A natural choice to open such a forum is James Jackson Kilpatrick, nationally syndicated news columnist, recently elected a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists.

In awarding Kilpatrick its highest honor to a journalist, the Society described him as "a persuasive and distinguished writer... (who) is the widely admired dean of American conservative commentators."

Formerly editor of the Richmond (Va.) News Leader, Kilpatrick has been a Washington-based columnist for the Washington Star syndicate for the past 10 years.

We are delighted that Mr. Kilpatrick has consented to write this article exclusively for Commitment:

The next few years will tell
The Regulators:

Can they be held in line?

James J. Kilpatrick

A kind of Gresham's Law applies to some of the words that make up language. Bad usages tend to drive out good; meanings, like currencies, get devalued; connotations, like rates of exchange, tend to change with the times. Consider, if you will, what is happening to the verb, to regulate. It stems from the same Latin root that gives us to rule, but until recently the verb carried no such magisterial meaning. We set dials to regulate an oven, or adjusted a pendulum to regulate a clock. Something that was done "by regulation" was likely to be done in an orderly way. Children were fed on a regular schedule. A friendly neighbor was a regular fellow. There was nothing especially ominous in the concept of a well-regulated life.

Little by little, and especially in the past 10 or 15 years, the words have taken on a different cast. If Americans have one domestic prospect to fear above all others, it is the prospect that we may be entering upon a new age the Age of the Regulators. The prospect is real. Indeed, without being fully aware of what is taking place, we may already have passed a point of no return. That melancholy verdict does not have to be accepted. The evidence is mixed but the evidence demands our sober thought.

Mind you, to complain of bureaucratic regulation is at least as old as the Republic. In their bill of particulars against King George, drawn up by Jefferson in the famous Declaration, the colonists protested that the monarch "has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance." Alexis de Tocqueville dealt with the prospect in the 1830s. The fear of excessive regulation was a familiar theme at the turn of the century. Apprehensions multiplied with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In one view, there is nothing new in the kind of regulation we are witnessing today; it is merely an extension of the same old trend.

These lullabies are deceptive. What we are witnessing in this Bicentennial year is a change not only in degree but also in kind. The speed of governmental regulation increases; the field enlarges. For various reasons, the Regulator assumes a new and more powerful role in our lives. The very purposes of regulation seem to be undergoing a subtle change. In some areas, the idea is not to regulate, but rather to reorder. At one time, regulations were fixed and objective, and their violation was a matter for the courts; the tariff was 4 percent, or the freight rate was $3.17, or the minimum wage was $1.65, or the meat was visibly contaminated and not fit for human consumption. Now considerations creep in that are more subjective, more matters of judgment and administrative discretion: How fair is a TV program? How affirmative is "affirmative action?" Was there discrimination? What is the proper racial balance in a school?

Over the past 10 or 15 years, the old-line agencies of the Federal government have been joined by a bewildering host of new ones: The Consumer Product Safety Commission, Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Energy Administration. The Federal hand reaches into land use, automobile design, college admissions, the management of hospitals. Until recently, none of these things was regarded as properly the business of the Federal government. Now the Federal role is pervasive, and the State

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and local governments grow in officiousness and power. Many of these developments are the natural and perhaps inevitable consequence of social change. A century ago the need for environmental protection may have existed, but it was not clearly perceived. Once Americans manifested a strong sense of family responsibility. The church played a major role in community life. Private charities, trade unions and political parties operated at human levels. Perceptions and institutions are different now.

Other developments are the result of political change. The founding fathers devised two principal restraints against the threat of national regimentation. One was federalism; the other was the separation of powers. Neither restraint has worked. The states have surrendered their reserved powers, or the Federal government has usurped them. By the same token, the legislative branch has delegated its responsibility to executive agencies. A thousand times more "law" now is made by executive rule and regulation than ever is made by act of Congress. The Regulators, entrenched behind barricades of civil service, are secure. Presidents, Secretaries, Senators and Congressmen may come and go, but the Regulators remain. Many of them do an excellent job; some merely make jobs for themselves.

The contributing factors run on and on: worldwide inflation, domestic recession, changing attitudes as to sex and race, sheer population, the loss of confidence in public officials, business, labor, and the press. In one way or another, all these have figured in the burgeoning presence of the Regulator. We are very close to what Tocqueville, 140 years ago, foresaw as a new kind of despotism - the despotism of the benefactor, of the shepherd to the sheep.

Is the trend irreversible? Perhaps not. An optimist can marshal much evidence to the contrary. The flood of consumerist legislation appears to have peaked and subsided. Both White House and Congress appear genuinely concerned at the degree and cost of regulatory activities. Some interesting shifts in population apparently are developing, as major cities decline and rural areas pick up. Public opinion polls indicate that the people grow steadily more antagonistic to governmental management of their lives.

The next few years will be critical. Much will depend upon what happens in the unionization of public employees. The role of the Federal government vis-a-vis the cities, as in the case of New York, will have to be carefully observed. Fateful decisions are close at hand in the field of national health insurance. The further nationalization of rail transportation is in prospect. Powerful forces in Congress are contending for the kind of economic "planning" that effectively would amount to total economic control. The country's intellectual and academic leadership, by and large, is congenial to the concepts of egalitarianism and governmental regulation.

The struggle could go either way, but the struggle surely will go to the patient Regulators if Americans do not waken to what is going on. Nearly two centuries ago, Pitt asked in Commons the question we ought constantly to ask today in our own legislative halls: "Can freedom be regulated without being in some part destroyed?"

The answer, of course, is plainly, no. In the kind of complex and interdependent society we live in, some degree of freedom necessarily must be relinquished. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett are long dead; the village blacksmith is long gone, and his spreading chestnut tree is no more than a parking lot now. Some of the old, reckless, improvident "freedom" has indeed been destroyed, and to the extent that this was an abuse of freedom, we may say good riddance. Much regulation is wise and useful. But the remaining islands of personal freedom and responsibility diminish year by year. If the Age of the Regulators is to be averted, we must hang on for dear life to what remains.

Solving the energy puzzle 'Shortages will mean higher costs

Ecology, energy, economics. For years the words were the sacred property of scientists and scholars. But in the past 10 years, events have converted them from abstractions into real situations, then into problems, and finally crises.

In the United States, the interrelationship of ecology, energy, and economics has gone well beyond the "situation" stage. There is definitely a problem and by some definitions, a crisis. At Abbott, environmentalists, energy conservationists, and economists look at this as a challenge - one that's very serious and long-term.

To meet the challenge, Abbott starts with one basic assumption: over the next 15 years, we must live with a scarcity of domestic energy sources, coupled with increasing environmental controls and rising costs.

From a study which took over a year to complete, Abbott has determined the impact of energy availability and its costs on the health care industry in general and the company in particular.

The impact already is great.

Total domestic energy costs for Abbott in 1975 were about $16 million, compared with only about $6 million in 1972, up more than 200 percent in only three years. Fortunately. during this time, while domestic energy use increased about 20 percent, domestic unit sales rose 50 percent.

Over the next five years, Abbott's total domestic corporate expenditures for energy are expected to be $120 million. That compares with a total of about $45 million spent in the last five years.

Although company growth will account for some of this increase, these cost projections are also based on several other factors:

The future U.S. economy will rely even more heavily on oil than it does today.

• Imports of oil, primarily from non-friendly countries, will increase. The U.S. will become more vulnerable to embargo through 1985.

• Natural gas for industrial boiler use will be virtually eliminated by 1978 and much sooner in gas-short areas.

• The use of natural gas will be appropriately restricted to residential, small commercial, and critical industrial processes.

• Decontrol of natural gas prices in 1976 will stimulate exploration for new natural gas to ensure sufficient supply of natural gas for industrial feedstock and process use between 1978 and 1990.

⚫ U.S. production of propane will continue to decline and imports of industrial propane will continue to increase. • Adequate supplies of electrical energy for the U.S. are forecast by most experts. However, capital constraints and nuclear plant delays are having a negative impact on future availability.