July 20, 1974, San Francisco -- Excerpt from Governor Ronald Reagan's address to a YAF audience

 “Right now American business and industry are in the deepest trouble they have ever been in our Nation’s entire history. A large percentage of people in this country today lay all their troubles at the door of business. The word profit is synonymous with evil as with the term ‘private property’ and therefore personal freedom, freedom of choice for everybody is in danger. Profit, property and freedom are inseparable, you can’t have any one of them without the other two.

“For a long time now we haven’t been taught enough economics in our schools and sometimes I am amazed at all of you, I don’t know how you have held out against what has been a consistent program of indoctrination, particularly through our educational system, and how you have avoided economic illiteracy that is so widespread. The result has been, however, that self-seeking demagogues have been able to take advantage of this---not of you but of those others. Investors, workers and consumers have been divided to the point that we have forgotten we are all vital components of something called free enterprise, totally dependent upon each other. If the public’s lack of understanding is not soon corrected the public may soon do great and irreparable harm to itself by demanding more interference than we already have by government.

“Government, as you know, in its answers to the problem, is somewhat less than a howling success, particularly when government involves itself in things that are not in its proper province.”