6. together as best I can at this time, unless all the breaks go against us I would expect a strong second half performance to produce a satisfactory year of increased earnings. The increase for the year 1971 would be less than the 33% recorded in the first quarter but hopefully as high or higher than the gain in 1970 over 1969. The basic philosophy that guides Utah's operations rests on the premise that management's job is to operate the company in a manner that best serves the long range interests of its shareholders and that the shareholders of a going concern derive only two benefits - dividends and a change in the price of their shares in the marketplace. Obviously dividends will grow and the market price of shares be enhanced on a sustainable basis only if earnings are increased, but we in Utah recognized a long time ago that earnings have a qualitative feature as well as a quantitative feature. The qualitative feature is reflected in the price/earnings ratio which mirrors the market's collective appraisal of the sustainability of the growth in earnings, the freedom from downside risk, the capability and adaptability of the management, and all the multitude of things that go into forecasting the future course of company performance. With this concept as our guiding principle we determined some 20 years ago that we would have to make fundamental changes in our business and our method of operation if we were to serve our shareholders well and this we proceeded to do. We stubbed our toes and faltered from time to time along the way but fortunately were able to bury our mistakes under our successes. After more than a half a century of being one of the country's leading heavy engineering and construction companies we recognized that the principal business in which we were engaged was held in low esteem in financial circles, for its earnings were volatile and its future indeterminable due to the fact that we were primarily a bidding contractor without the benefit of the specialized engineering expertise that would permit our company to obtain business on a negotiated basis or to give it competitive advantages. We determined that we could and should use the knowhow that we had acquired as an earth mover and a contract miner to enter the field of surface mining, reasoning that we could use our people and our equipment to operate mines too small to be of interest to the major mining companies who were our customers. It is of no matter now that we were right for the wrong reasons, for we discovered early in the transition process: that little mines were more trouble than big mines that equipment for mines should be selected specifically for the mine and not obtained from whatever pool of used construction equipment happened to be available; and that skills required for superior mine management were not readily transferable from construction personnel. The decision to enter mining was sound, once we decided to do it the right way. We had one advantage in the beginning - we were a mining company without any mines. We were not stuck with the past but free to determine our future. We