The strike in the temple of consumption: Consumer activism and twentieth-century American political culture

Journal of American History

Volumn 88, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 99-128

  Glickman, Lawrence B ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA   (United States)

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EID: 33847049364     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2674920     Document Type: Article

References (301)

1. Florence Peterson, Strikes in the United States, 1880-1936 (Washington, 1938), 41, 45; Colston E. Warne interview by Sybil Shainwald, spring 1971, transcript, p. 632, Colston E. Warne Oral History (Consumers Union Archives, Yonkers, N.Y.).
2. The phrase "unrest in odd places" is from Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (Boston, 1970), 126.
3. "Editorially Speaking," Business Week, Dec. 14, 1935, p. 43.
4. On the concept of "movement culture," see Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1996), 67-77;
5. and Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York, 1976), 32-35.
6. "Strike in 'The Temple of Consumption,'" Sales Management, Sept. 15, 1935.
7. For the phrase "sacred temple of consumption," see "Schlink's Stand on Consumers' Research Employees' Strikes Appears Inconsistent with His Other Radical Philosophy," Electronic Refrigeration News, Sept. 18, 1935.
8. "Who Is John Heasty?," Advance, Dec. 1, 1935, pp. 117-18.
9. On the consumer as "debutante," see "Jeanette Eaton, Our 'Counselor to the Consumer,'" Pictorial Review, 35 (Feb. 1934), 2.
10. On the "elusive consumer," see M. C. Phillips and F. J. Schlink, Discovering Consumers (New York, 1934), 7.
11. John Chamberlain, "Who Is the Consumer?," Common Sense, 3 (June 1934), 15-16;
12. Walton H. Hamilton, "The Consumer's Front," Survey Graphic, 24 (Nov. 1935), 524-28, 565, 567.
13. Consumers' Research NY Strike Aid Committee to "Friends," Oct. 19, 1935, "CR Strike, AFL Labor Corr. 1935," folder 1, box 4, Arthur Kallet Papers (Consumers Union Archives).
14. For the phrase "forgotten consumer," see "Buyers, Beware!," Nation, Nov. 6, 1935, p. 526.
15. Colston E. Warne, "Consumers on the March," Nation, June 5, 1937, pp. 645-46;
16. Ruth Brindze, "Consumers on the March," Independent Woman, 18 (Jan. 1939), 6-8, 22-23;
17. and Mary Taylor, "Consumers on the March," Christian Science Monitor Weekly Magazine Section, June 22, 1938, p. 3.
18. The image of a "mighty army of consumers" became far more common in the 1930s. For examples of its use in the Progressive Era, see David Thelen, "Patterns of Consumer Consciousness in the Progressive Movement: Robert M. LaFollette, the Antitrust Persuasion, and Labor Legislation," in The Quest for Social Justice, ed. Ralph M. Aderman (Madison, 1983), 31.
19. Stanley High, "Guinea Pigs, Left March," Forum and Century, 102 (Oct. 1939), 153-57;
20. Joseph Gaer, Consumers All: The Problem of Consumer Protection (New York, 1940), 5;
21. Clark Foreman and Michael Ross, The Consumer Seeks a Way (New York, 1935), 189-207;
22. "The Political Power of Consumers," Consumers' Digest, 5 (Feb. 1939), 37;
23. Edward A. Filene, The Consumers Dollar (New York, 1934).
24. John Graham Brooks, The Consumers' League (Cambridgeport, 1899), 4-5, pamphlet in folder 1, box 1, John Graham Brooks Papers (Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.);
25. "Who Is the Consumer?," Consumer Bulletin, 51 (Feb. 1968), 23;
26. Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile (New York, 1965).
27. T. H. Breen, "'Baubles of Britain': The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present, 119 (May 1988), 73-104;
28. T. H. Breen, "An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America," Journal of British Studies, 25 (Oct. 1986), 467-99;
29. T. H. Breen, "Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly, 50 (July 1993), 471-501;
30. Robin D. G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History, 80 (June 1993), 75-112, esp. 104;
31. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, "Negro Boycotts of Jim Crow Streetcars in Tennessee," American Quarterly, 21 (Winter 1969), 755-63.
32. On catalog shopping, see Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (New York, 1992), 88.
33. The statement on "consumer consciousness" is from Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nations Work, vol. I: The Rise of Women's Political Culture (New Haven, 1995), 23.
34. On women's consumer politics in the twentieth century, see Jacqueline Kay Dirks, "Righteous Goods: Women's Production, Reform Publicity, and the National Consumers' League, 1891-1919" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1996);
35. Dana Frank, "Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food: The 1917 New York Cost-of-Living Protests," Feminist Studies, 11 (Summer 1985), 255-85;
36. Carolyn M. Goldstein, "Mediating Consumption: Home Economics and American Consumers, 1900-1940" (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1994);
37. Paula E. Hyman, "Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902," American Jewish History, 70 (Sept. 1980), 91-105;
38. and Felicia Kornbluh, "To Fulfill Their 'Rightly Needs': Consumerism and the National Welfare Rights Movement," Radical History Review, 69 (Fall 1997), 76-113.
39. Dana Frank, Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism (Boston, 1999).
40. On the xenophobia and racism that sometimes accompanied labor's consumer politics, see Lawrence B. Glickman, A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society (Ithaca, 1997), 78-91.
41. The word "unprecedented" is from Stuart Chase, "Consumer Takes Stage Center," New York Post, Aug. 14, 1934, p. 18.
42. Brindze, "Consumers on the March";
43. Ruth Brindze, "Facts for Consumers," Nation, Nov. 6, 1935, p. 541;
44. J. B. Matthews, Guinea Pigs No More (New York, 1936).
45. For a similar view, see Seba Eldridge, "Socialism via the Consumers: From Private Ownership to Public Ownership," Common Sense, 3 (Feb. 1934), 18-23.
46. Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1984), esp. 166, 172.
47. Susman does not mention consumer organizations and uses the term "consumerism" to connote the triumph of commercial values. For an influential dismissal of the consumer movement, see Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study of Economic Ambivalence (Princeton, 1966), 198-204.
48. On consumer politics in the 1930s, see Denning, Cultural Front;
49. Landon R. Y. Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill, 2000);
50. Charles McGovern, "Consumption and Citizenship in the United States, 1900-1940," in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 37-58;
51. Charles Francis McGovern, "Sold American: Inventing the Consumer, 1890-1940" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1993);
52. Kathleen Grace Donahue, "Conceptualizing the Good Society: The Idea of the Consumer and Modern American Political Thought" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1994);
53. Norman David Katz, "Consumers Union: The Movement and the Magazine" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1977);
54. Peter Samson, "The Emergence of a Consumer Interest in America, 1870-1930" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1980);
55. and Sybil Schwartz, "The Genesis and Growth of the First Consumer Testing Organization" (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1971).
56. On African American consumer politics, see Cheryl Greenberg, "Or Does It Explode?": Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York, 1991);
57. Darlene Clark Hine, "The Housewives' League of Detroit: Black Women and Economic Nationalism," in Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism, ed. Nancy A. Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsock (Urbana, 1993), 223-41;
58. Andor Skotnes, "'Buy Where You Can Work': Boycotting for Jobs in African American Baltimore, 1933-1934," Journal of Social History, 27 (Summer 1994), 735-61;
59. and Gary Jerome Hunter, "'Don't Buy from Where You Can't Work': Black Urban Boycott Movements during the Depression, 1929-1941" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1977).
60. On the "Copeland-Tugwell" Pure Food and Drug bill, see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal: The Age of Roosevelt (Boston, 1958), 355-59.
61. For taxonomies of consumer organizations, see Helen Sorenson, The Consumer Movement: What It Is and What It Means (New York, 1941), 111-36;
62. and Kenneth Dameron, "The Consumer Movement," Harvard Business Review, 17 (Spring 1939), 271-89.
63. Consumer Education, the magazine of the Institute for Consumer Education, regularly listed consumer activities and organizations. On the radio program, see "Over the Air," Consumer Education, 1 (Nov. 1939), 6.
64. Dorothy Thompson, "We, the Consumers," New York Herald Tribune, Aug. 27, 1936, p. 17.
65. For the phrase "awakened consumer consciousness," see "Consumer Influence," Drug Trade News, Aug. 28, 1939, p. 18.
66. The American Retail Federation sponsored an influential study: Werner K. Gabler, Labeling the Consumer Movement (Washington, 1939).
67. "Searchlight," Consumer Education, 1 (Dec. 1939), 5;
68. "Old-Timers," Consumer Education, ibid. (March 1939).
69. Consumer activists were constantly being warned of "bogus" consumer organizations. See, for example, Hosiery Worker, April 1, 1938, p. 2.
70. As Richard Wightman Fox has noted, "The ideal of fulfillment through consumption and leisure was if anything furthered by the experience of involuntary deprivation." Richard Wightman Fox, "Epitaph for Middletown: Robert S. Lynd and the Analysis of Consumer Culture," in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York, 1983), 103-41.
71. On ways the "Great Depression did stimulate the growth of consumer consciousness," see John S. Gilkeson Jr., Middle-Class Providence, 1820-1940 (Princeton, 1986), 339-40;
72. and Olivier Zunz, Why the American Century? (Chicago, 1998), 107.
73. As Sen. Hugo Black wrote, "enough income must be distributed to American wage earners to enable them to buy American goods." Hugo Black, "My Views on the Short Work Week," Common Sense, 4 (Feb. 1935), 22-23.
74. On the political significance of debates about consumption in the 1930s, see Michael Bernstein, The Great Depression and Economic Change: America, 1919-1939 (New York, 1987);
75. Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York, 1995);
76. Meg Jacobs, "Democracy's Third Estate: New Deal Politics and the Construction of a 'Consuming Public,'" International Labor and Working-Class History, 55 (Spring 1999), 27-51;
77. David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York, 1999);
78. and Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism, 21-22.
79. Hamilton, "Consumer's Front";
80. Chase, "Consumer Takes Stage Center";
81. Stuart Chase, "The Age of Distribution," Nation, July 25, 1934, pp. 93-95;
82. Stuart Chase, The Economy of Abundance (New York, 1934).
83. Cf. John Dewey, "The Need for a New Party I: The Present Crisis," New Republic, March 18, 1931, pp. 115-17.
84. Horace Meyer Kallen, "Consumers Organize!," Christian Century, June 27, 1934, pp. 858-60;
85. Horace M. Kallen, The Decline and Rise of the Consumer: A Philosophy of Consumer Cooperation (New York, 1936).
86. On consumers in a corporate economy, see E. J. Lever and J. J. Schalet, "Consumers, Unite!," New Republic, Nov. 15, 1933, pp. 20-21.
87. For the call for a "science of consumption," see John M. Cassels, Institute for Consumer Education, Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri (Ann Arbor, 1938), 1.
88. For a concurring opinion, see Charles S. Wyand, The Economics of Consumption (New York, 1938).
89. For Hildegarde Kneeland's call for mass consumption, see Washington Post, April 7, 1939, p. 19.
90. A similar argument was made in the 1938 Report on Economic Conditions in the South, in Confronting Southern Poverty in the Great Depression, ed. David L. Carlton and Peter A. Coclanis (Boston, 1996), 78-80.
91. Thompson, "We, the Consumers."
92. Cf. "Labor and the NRA," New Republic, Dec. 20, 1933, p. 169.
93. Graeme O'Geran, "The Confused Consumer," Daily Register, March 2, 1938, pp. 1-2, photocopy, "Consumerism - Discovery of the Consumer by Left-Wing Groups, 1934-1944," folder 142, box 29, Consumers' Research Archives (Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.);
94. J. B. Matthews and R. E. Shallcross, Partners in Plunder: The Cost of Business Dictatorship (New York, 1935), 77.
95. Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink, Your Money's Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumer's Dollar (New York, 1927).
96. For Robert S. Lynd's statement, see "The Consumer Movement," Business Week, April 22, 1939, p. 40.
97. The bewildered housewife needed help from experts to keep up with the rapidly changing consumer economy, according to Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York, 1929).
98. Fox, "Epitaph for Middletown." The "guinea pig" books include Arthur Kallet and F. J. Schlink, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics (New York, 1932);
99. F. J. Schlink, Eat, Drink, and Be Wary (New York, 1935);
100. Matthews, Guinea Pigs No More;
101. M. C. Phillips, Skin Deep (New York, 1934);
102. and Matthews and Shallcross, Partners in Plunder.
103. (Ruth Shallcross was Matthews's second wife; his third wife and eventual widow was Ruth I. Matthews.) For a complete list of such books, see McGovern, "Sold American," 353n107.
104. C. Phillips is quoted in Katz, "Consumers Union," 36.
105. F. J. Schlink, "Off the Editors Chest," Consumers' Research Bulletin, 4 (Feb. 1938), 1.
106. "The Consumer Movement," Business Week, April 22, 1939, p. 40.
107. "How a book may develop into an institution is illustrated by the history of the Consumers' Club . . . an outgrowth of Your Money's Worth," according to International Labor News Service, "Work of the Consumers' Club," May 25, 1929, "Publicity-Press Clippings," folder 1, box 88, Consumers' Research Archives. Warne, "Consumers on the March," 645. On the number of subscribers, see Colston E. Warne, The Consumer Movement, ed. Richard B. Morse (Manhattan, 1993), 46.
108. CR's success was "due to liberal and radical support," according to a CR strike leader: John Heasty, "The Amazing Situation in Consumers' Research," Advance, Dec. 1, 1935, p. 110.
109. "The Buyers Baedeker," New Republic, Nov. 26, 1930, pp. 32-33;
110. "Talk of the Town," New Yorker, Jan. 24, 1931, pp. 10-11;
111. Richard Lockridge, "Advice to Consumers," New Yorker, ibid., Oct. 19, 1931, p. 25.
112. On CR as a "nuisance," see "Thunder on the Left," Tide of Advertising and Marketing, 9 (Sept. 1935), 22-23.
113. "CR: Comedy Relief," Business Week, Oct. 12, 1935, p. 30;
114. Frank Dalton O'Sullivan, The Poison Pen of Jersey (Chicago, 1936), n.p.;
115. G. L. Eskew, Guinea Pigs and Bugbears (Chicago, 1938);
116. Charles E. Carpenter, Dollars and Sense (New York, 1929), xiii.
117. For another venomous critique of the consumer movement, see George E. Sokolsky, The American Way of Life (New York, 1939).
118. Chicago Daily News, Sept. 12, 1935, p. 16;
119. "Subject of CR," Tide of Advertising and Marketing, 9 (Oct. 1935), 72;
120. "Consumer Movement," 47-50;
121. Fred DeArmond, "Consumer Clans Are Gathering," Nation's Business, 26 (Jan. 1938), 41-44.
122. On the importance of the consumer movement for socialists, see Richard M. Briggs, "Consumers' Research," New Leader, March 14, 1931, p. 8.
123. "The Strike at Consumers' Research," New Republic, Oct. 9, 1935, pp. 230-31.
124. For the characterization of CR leaders as crusaders, see Fletcher Pratt, "The Consumer Sees Red," American Mercury, 39 (Nov. 1935), 313-20, esp. 314.
125. "The C.R. Strike," Nation, Dec. 4, 1935, p. 637.
126. Chase and Schlink, Your Money's Worth, 3;
127. Wyand, Economics of Consumption, 393.
128. Cf. Richard H. Rovere, "J. B. Matthews - the Informer," Nation, Oct. 3, 1942, p. 316.
129. I disagree with Charles McGovern's characterization of CR as expressing an "anti-market" and an "activist republican derived vision," with "consumer protest and activism" central to its ideology. I also disagree with Kathleen Donahue's argument that Schlink underwent a major and abrupt political transformation from Left to Right as a result of the strike; I see a more gradual shift from early-twentieth-century Progressivism to mid-twentieth-century interest-group liberalism. Thus I find continuity in CR's attitudes before and after the strike. McGovern, "Sold American," esp. 6, 9, 280, 301;
130. McGovern, "Consumption and Citizenship in the United States," 53-54;
131. Donahue, "Conceptualizing the Good Society," 338-42.
132. Mary Kay, "The Development of Gyp-Consciousness: What Consumers' Research Is Doing," Churchman, July 4, 1931, p. 10;
133. Charles S. Wyand, "Wages vs. Purchasing Power," Consumers' Digest, 2 (Aug. 1937), 66-70, esp. 69.
134. For Schlink's comments, see Schwartz, "Genesis and Growth of the First Consumer Testing Organization," 157-58;
135. Samson, "Emergence of a Consumer Interest," 315;
136. C. Phillips to Ferdinand Lundberg, April 28, 1936, "Strike-AFL-William Green, 1935," folder 1, box 418, Consumers' Research Archives; Charles S. Wyand, "Consumers and the Labor Movement," Consumers' Digest, 2 (Oct. 1937), 71-75, esp. 72-73.
137. Cf. Wyand, Economics of Consumption, 394.
138. On CR's refusal to make alliances, see Schwartz, "Genesis and Growth of the First Consumer Testing Organization," 123;
139. and F. J. Schlink, "Off the Editor's Chest," Consumer Bulletin, 46 (April 1963), 2.
140. For Schlink's support for the free market, see "Consumers' Is Anti-Red, Says F. J. Schlink," Washington Star, Dec. 14, 1939.
141. J. B. Matthews, "The Cooperatives - An Experiment in Civilization," Atlantic Monthly, 158 (Dec. 1936), 705-15, esp. 715;
142. Wyand, Economics of Consumption, 393.
143. For an assessment of Schlink as "strongly anti-capitalist," "pro labor," and "quite radical," see Arthur Kallet interview by Sybil Schwartz, Dec. 7, 1970, Arthur Kallet Oral History (Consumers Union Archives). The strongest evidence I have found of Schlink's putative radicalism were his vote for Norman Thomas in the 1928 presidential election and his visits to Brookwood Labor College in the early 1930s. The former seems evidence of belief in planning and efficiency rather than anticapitalism; Brookwood provided him a forum. McGovern, "Sold American," 245;
144. E. J. Lever interview by Colston Warne and Shainwald, July 31, 1971, E. J. Lever Oral History (Consumers Union Archives). For assessments of Schlink's radicalism similar to mine, see Schwartz, "Genesis and Growth of the First Consumer Testing Organization," 68;
145. and Samson, "Emergence of a Consumer Interest," 315.
146. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley, 1985).
147. For a similar interpretation, see McGovern, "Consumption and Citizenship in the United States," 40-41;
148. and McGovern, "Sold American," 304-7.
149. This view of consumers was not limited to the CR circle. See Robert S. Lynd with Alice Hanson, "The People as Consumers," in Recent Social Trends in the United States, ed. Wesley C. Mitchell (2 vols., New York, 1933), II, 866.
150. Robert and Helen Lynd had come to similar conclusions in Middletown. Chase and Schlink, Your Money's Worth, 1.
151. For the statement by Phillips, see McGovern, "Sold American," 306.
152. James Rorty, "What's Wrong with Consumers' Research," Consumers Defender (Oct. 1935), 5-6, 15;
153. James Rorty, "Notes on the CR Strike," American Spectator, 3 (Nov. 1935), 16. For the comment on the "destruction of . . . exploiters," see "J. B. Matthews, Dies Committee Report (1939)," "Personnel - J. B. Matthews-Dies Committee Report?," folder 30, box 43, Consumers' Research Archives.
154. DeArmond, "Consumer Clans Are Gathering," 44.
155. "What we call 'the consumer movement' today is really a strange assortment of activities," according to Gaer, Consumers All, 113.
156. Schlink, "Off the Editor's Chest," Consumer Bulletin, 46 (April 1963), 2.
157. On labor's nineteenth-century "consumerist turn," see Glickman, Living Wage.
158. On the National Consumers League (NCL) in the Progressive Era, see Dirks, "Righteous Goods."
159. On home economics, see Goldstein, "Mediating Consumption."
160. On Herbert Hoover and the 1920s, see Kendrick A. Clements, Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism: Engineering the Good Life (Lawrence, 2000).
161. Norman David Katz uses the terms "gradualist" and "radical" to describe the two points of view. But "gradualist" suggests that "technocratic individualists" supported the same kind of change as "social movement" activists, only over a longer period of time; the key difference, however, was not temporal but philosophical. Katz, "Consumers Union," 9.
162. The League of Women Shoppers (LWS) was one of many social movement organizations to emerge in this period, including African American and working-class organizations that promoted grass-roots consumer efforts to support union-made products and to fight racial discrimination and the high cost of living. See, for example, Daily Worker, Oct. 27, 1935, p. 4;
163. Hosiery Worker, May 20, 1938, p. 4;
164. Greenberg, Or Does It Explode?;
165. Skotnes, "'Buy Where You Can Work'";
166. and Hunter, "'Don't Buy from Where You Can't Work.'"
167. The NCL had shifted its focus from grass-roots activism in the Progressive Era to government lobbying for labor standards in the New Deal period, according to Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism.
168. "Editorial," Woman Shopper, 1 (Aug. 1935), 1.
169. The women in the league prominently mentioned in the media included Mrs. Leon Henderson, wife of the Works Progress Administration economic analyst; Mrs. Mordecai Ezekiel, wife of an economic adviser to Henry Wallace, the secretary of agriculture; Mrs. Gifford Pinchot; Mrs. Edwin Colman, daughter of Sen. Burton K. Wheeler; Mrs. Henry Morgenthau; Mrs. William O. Douglas; Mrs. Donald Richberg; Mrs. John Collier; Mrs. James Landis. (The first names of married women were rarely mentioned: Virginia F. Durr was listed as Mrs. Clifford Durr. First names were used for single women: the head of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor was typically called Miss Mary Anderson.) On the LWS's merging of "facts" and collective action, see Helene Frankel, "Mr. Schlink of N.J.," Woman Shopper, 1 (Nov. 1935), 1.
170. The phrase "mink coat picket lines" is from a LWS pamphlet, Women - Power in the League (n.p., n.d.), in Minneapolis League of Women Shoppers Papers (Minnesota Historical Society, Minneapolis, Minn.).
171. For the phrase "mink coat brigades," see Abraham Isserman interview by Shainwald, Feb. 3, 1973, Abraham Isserman Oral History (Consumers Union Archives). For the description of LWS members as "fur-coated," see Washington Post, March 18, 1937, p. 5.
172. Kathleen McInerny, the executive secretary of the LWS and a Consumers Union (CU) board member, described wearing a cotton wedding dress. Kathleen McInerny interview by Shainwald, Nov. 12, 1972, Kathleen McInerny Oral History (Consumers Union Archives). On the power of aggregate shopping, see the pamphlet for the Pittsburgh League of Women Shoppers, Women Do 90% of the Buying! Use Your Buying Power for Justice!, in "Front Organizations, 1935-1970," folders 9-12, box 533, Consumers Research Archives. Advertisers had long used the 90% figure.
173. See Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915 (New York, 1991), 141;
174. and McGovern, "Sold American," 30n25.
175. "Mary H. Vorse Lauds Women Shoppers Here," Washington Star, April 26, 1938.
176. On the remedy for consumers' inarticulateness, see "Pro and Anti-Silk Question Argued by Demonstrators," Washington Post, Jan. 29, 1938.
177. See Daniel Horowitz, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940 (Baltimore, 1985);
178. and Lawrence B. Glickman, "Born to Shop? Consumer Society and Consumer History," in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, ed. Lawrence B. Glickman (Ithaca, 1999).
179. Christopher Lasch, "The Culture of Consumption," in Encyclopedia of American Social History, ed. Mary Kupiec Cayton, Elliot J. Gorn, and Peter W. Williams (3 vols., New York, 1993), II, 1388.
180. Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production, trans. Mark Poster (St. Louis, 1975), 17;
181. Kenneth Burke, "Waste - the Future of Prosperity," New Republic, July 16, 1930, pp. 228-31;
182. Stuart Chase, The Tragedy of Waste (New York, 1925).
183. What Is the League of Women Shoppers? (New York, n.d.), in folder "League of Women Shoppers U.S." (Tamiment Library, New York University, N.Y., N.Y.).
184. On the association between women, social science, and reform in the 1930s, see Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism, 29.
185. On a parallel distinction between female "social work" and male "social insurance," see Linda Gordon, "Social Insurance and Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890-1935," American Historical Review, 97 (Feb. 1992), 19-54.
186. Schlink earned $7,000 per year; the next highest salary was $2,080. See Schwartz, "Genesis and Growth of the First Consumer Testing Organization," 156.
187. Primary sources on the strike include Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board (326 vols., Washington, 1937), II, 57-77;
188. [Reinhold Niebuhr and Roger Baldwin], Report of Investigating Committee on the Strike at the Plant of Consumers' Research, Washington, New Jersey, Nov. 16, 1935 (New York, 1935), pamphlet in folder 8, box 418, Consumers Research Archives;
189. "The 'United Front' against CR," Consumers' Research Bulletin, 2 (Nov. 1935), 24;
190. CR's pamphlet, The Strike at Consumers' Research (n.p., n.d.);
191. Heasty, "Amazing Situation in Consumers' Research," 110-11;
192. J. B. Matthews, Odyssey of a Fellow Traveler (New York, 1938), 259-69;
193. J. B. Matthews, "Consumers' Research Replies to Mr. Heasty," Advance, March 1, 1936, pp. 268-70;
194. and Arthur Kallet, "Consumers' Research on Strike," New Masses, Sept. 17, 1935, pp. 10-13.
195. Secondary sources include Donahue, "Conceptualizing the Good Society," 314-51;
196. Norman Isaac Silber, Test and Protest: The Influence of Consumers Union (New York, 1983), 19-23;
197. Katz, "Consumers Union," 68-82;
198. McGovern, "Sold American," 392-401;
199. and Schwartz, "Genesis and Growth of the First Consumer Testing Organization," 148-83.
200. Nation, Sept. 18, 1935, pp. 309-10;
201. Alexander L. Crosby, "Consumers' Research Fights the Union," Nation, ibid., Sept. 25, 1935, pp. 356-57;
202. Arthur Kallet, "Partners in Strike Breaking: Consumers as Workers vs. Consumers as Employers," Common Sense, 4 (Sept. 1935), 22-23;
203. "The Strike at Consumers Research," New Republic, Oct. 9, 1935, pp. 230-31.
204. For Palmers wife's statement, see New York World-Telegram, Sept.11, 1935, p. 6.
205. "The Week," New Republic, Jan. 29, 1936, p. 322; Consumers' Research NY Strike Aid Committee to "Friends," Oct. 19, 1935, box 4, Kallet Papers.
206. "Thunder on the Left," 22-23;
207. "When the Mighty Fall," Advertising and Selling, Sept. 12, 1935, p. 5;
208. "CR: Comedy Relief";
209. "Kallet vs. Schlink," Business Week, Sept. 7, 1935, p. 8;
210. "Schlink's Stand on Consumers' Research Employees' Strike Appears Inconsistent with His Other Radical Philosophy." The editorial appeared in Camden [New Jersey] Courier Post, Sept. 14, 1935.
211. Elizabeth Dilling, The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background (Chicago, 1936), 314-15.
212. For efforts to locate the "typical consumer," see "A Trade Journal Discovers Consumers," Consumers' Research Bulletin, 1 (Nov. 1934), 6;
213. "Business Cultivates Consumers," Consumers' Research Bulletin, ibid., 2 (Jan. 1935), 13;
214. New York World-Telegram, April 11, 1936, p. 3A;
215. New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 14, 1939, p. 30;
216. New York Times, Jan. 5, 1940, p. L27;
217. "Mrs. Typical Consumer," Consumer Education, Jan. 1, 1939;
218. and "Typical Consumer," Tide of Advertising and Marketing, Feb. 1, 1941, p. 12.
219. "When the Mighty Fall," 22-23;
220. "Schlink's Stand on Consumers' Research Employees' Strike Appears Inconsistent with His Other Radical Philosophy";
221. "Strike in 'the Temple of Consumption.'"
222. On the "tie up" between business and Communists, see F. J. Schlink to John R. Commons, April 20, 1936, "Strike 1936," folder 14, box 418, Consumers' Research Archives;
223. "'United Front' against CR," 24.
224. The influential columnist Walter Winchell noted that CR's bosses "blame the strike on both Reds and Capitalists, which, even if not true, isn't a bad fantasy." New York Daily Mirror, Sept. 24, 1935.
225. New York Post, Sept. 13, 1935. Arthur Kallet concurred: "Schlink goes to great extremes to learn the truth about the goods which he reports to his subscribers but the fine balance he displays as to products is lacking in his dealings with human beings." This was quoted to him as a statement he made during the strike. Kallet Oral History.
226. Heasty, "Amazing Situation in Consumers' Research," 110.
227. See the LWS report, "Investigation of Strike at Consumers' Research," Nov. 1935, folder 12, box 533, Consumers' Research Archives. Alexander Crosby interview by Norman Katz, Nov. 19, 1974, transcript pp. 2, 3, Alexander Crosby Oral History (Consumers Union Archives).
228. [Niebuhr and Baldwin], Refort of Investigating Committee on the Strike at the Plant of Consumers' Research;
229. "Niebuhr Committee Reports on Consumers' Research," Christian Century, Dec. 11, 1935, p. 1581;
230. "Fixing the Blame at CR," New Republic, Nov. 13, 1935, p. 62;
231. "The Autocrats of C.R.," New Masses, Dec. 3, 1935, p. 3.
232. The other members of the Niebuhr Committee, labeled "prominent liberals" by the New Masses, were Norman Thomas; Professor George S. Counts; Professor William L. Nunn; Rev. Herman F. Reissig; Helena N. Simmons, secretary of the New Jersey Consumers League; James Waterman Wise; and Vincent J. Murphy, secretary of the New Jersey State Federation of Labor. For Schlink's reaction to the report, see New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 28, 1935, p. 4.
233. "The 'Impartiality' of the Niebuhr-Baldwin Committee, Dec. 5, 1935," folders 9-10, box 418, Consumers' Research Archives;
234. J. B. Matthews to Roger Baldwin, Nov. 20, 1935, folder 8, The 'Impartiality' of the Niebuhr-Baldwin Committee, Dec. 5, 1935," ibid.
235. On "progressive" support for the strikers, see "Autocrats of C. R.," 4.
236. On the mock trial, see the announcement in New Masses, Oct. 22, 1935;
237. and "Guilty! People's Court Condemns CR Board Members," IPA News Bulletin (Nov. 1935), in folder 42, box 421, Consumers' Research Archives. James Gilman to Consumers' Research Subscribers, Oct. 30, 1935, folder 24, ibid.
238. Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, II, 69;
239. "This Week," New Republic, Feb. 12, 1936, p. 2;
240. New York Times, Jan. 29, 1936, p. L25;
241. Colston Warne to Consumers Union (CU) supporters, March 6, 1936, "CU Correspondence/Documents, 1936-1955," folder 1, box 4, Kallet Papers;
242. Dewey Palmer to Warne, Jan. 29, 1936, "CU Correspondence/Documents, 1936-1955," ibid.
243. On labor solidarity, see the CU pamphlet, Workers as Consumers: How Consumers Union Serves Labor (n.p., [1936]),
244. in "CU Labor Advisory Committee," folder 3, ibid. Consumers' Union Reports, 1 (May 1936), 2.
245. "Labor Unions Endorse Plans for Consumer: Organization Is Outgrowth of CR Strike," Progressive, April 11, 1936, p. 5;
246. "Consumer Movement," 40-41;
247. Wyand, Economics of Consumption, 394.
248. On CU's appeal for "mass support," see Nation, Sept. 18, 1935, p. 309.
249. On the growth of CR, see Warne, "Consumers on the March," 646. Abraham Isserman declared that CU represented a "very positive manifestation of . . . the New Deal." See Isserman interview by Katz, Oct. 8, 1974, Isserman Oral History. Stuart Chase interview by Warne, Oct. 17, 1969, Stuart Chase Oral History (Consumers Union Archives).
250. On the strike as a "putsch" and "coup," see Schlink to Arleen Kaufmann, April 21, 1936, "Strike-Background-Union and Left-Wing Connections of the Union, 1936-1944," folder 4, box 418, Consumers Research Archives;
251. and Schlink to E. E. Devendorf, July 23, 1936, "Strike-Background-Union and Left-Wing Connections of the Union, 1936-1944," ibid.
252. J. B. Matthews, "A New Way for Making Suckers out of Consumers," Consumers' Digest, 3 (Feb. 1938), 70-80;
253. Pratt, "Consumer Sees Red," 314-15, 317;
254. M. C. Phillips, "Are Consumers Being Used as a Red Front?," Consumers' Digest, 9 (Feb. 1941), 53-59.
255. On Matthews's early anticommunism, see Matthews, Odyssey of a Fellow Traveler.
256. "Consumers' Red Network," Business Week, Dec. 16, 1939, pp. 17-18.
257. For the full text of Matthews's Report to the Dies Committee, see "Consumer Groups Called 'Red,'" American Consumer, 7 (Dec. 1939), 14-19.
258. Matthews's report on Consumers Union for HUAC contains many examples of his use of circumstantial evidence to proclaim guilt: he compiles lists of "fellow traveling" organizations to which CU's leadership belonged. See J. B. Matthews, "Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., 1939-1948," 1948, folder 9, box 168, J. B. Matthews Papers (Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.).
259. A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report claimed that the consumer movement was "dominated by members of the Communist Party, communist sympathizers, and radicals." See untitled report, Jan. 1940, p. 1, Esther Peterson Papers, MC 450 (Schlesinger Library). For challenges to the accuracy of Matthews's report, see Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (New York, 1968), 83-85.
260. Isserman Oral History; Kallet Oral History; J. B. Matthews to Roger Baldwin, Nov. 20, 1935, folder 8, box 418, Consumers' Research Archives; Warne Oral History; Matthews, "Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., 1939-1948"; McInerny Oral History. See also Crosby Oral History.
261. For criticism of the Dies Report, see "President Shows Displeasure with Methods of Dies," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 13, 1939;
262. and "Voorhis Attacks Dies, Matthews," New York Times, Dec. 12, 1939.
263. For Drew Pearson's dismissal of the report, see "Consumer Groups Irate over Red Charge, Plan to Ask Probe of Dies," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 22, 1939.
264. These articles are reprinted in a special insert in Consumer Education, 2 (Jan. 1940).
265. For HUAC's 1949 list of disloyal organizations, see New York Times, June 14, 1949, p. 34.
266. "The Constructive Consumer Movement Is Honest and Sincere," American Consumer, 7 (Dec. 1939), 1;
267. Stuart Chase, "The Years Between," Consumer Education, 1 (Nov. 1939), 7;
268. Sorenson, Consumer Movement, x-xii.
269. For an overview of the backlash against consumer groups, see George H. Tichenor, "War on Consumers," Forum and Century, 103 (Jan. 1940), 28-31.
270. For a recantation from a former LWS member, see Helen Woodward, "How I Joined a Red Front," Freeman, May 17, 1954, pp. 594-96.
271. The celebrity ex-Communist, Elizabeth Bentley, the "Red Spy Queen," had worked briefly for CU in 1937 and claimed in the early 1950s to have observed subversive activity there. See "Memorandum to the File," June 10, 1953,
272. "Consumers Union, Correspondence/Documents, 1936-1955," folder 1, box 1, Kallet Papers.
273. Amy Swerdlow, "Congress of American Women," in Encyclopedia of the American Left, ed. Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas (New York, 1990), 161-62.
274. As a result of the Dies investigation, noted Kathleen McInerny, "Arthur may have very well retreated to a technical view, which was his first love." McInerny Oral History. David Caplovitz, The Poor Pay More: Consumer Practices of Low Income Families (New York, 1963);
275. Warne, Consumer Movement, ed. Morse, 151-221.
276. Demonstrating that there was still a wide gulf between CU and CR, Ruth I. Matthews, J. B.'s third wife and widow, described the Consumers Federation as "the culmination of agitation on the part of left-wing critics of business." Ruth I. Matthews to John A. Clements, Nov. 7, 1967, "Consumer Lobby, 1967," folder 7, box 168, Matthews Papers.
277. For Isserman's 1974 statement, see Katz, "Consumers Union," 311. In 1973, the journalist and former CU board member Sidney Margolies criticized the organization as "too preoccupied with connoisseurship. . . . It should be more activist about consumer goods." Sidney Margolies interview by Shainwald and Patrick Mahoney, Sept. 8, 1973, Sidney Margolies Oral History (Consumers Union Archives). In 1999 a promotional leaflet from CU had these words on the cover: "It's not only about money. It's also about . . ." Anticipating the word "ethics" or "responsibility," one opened the leaflet to find "Cell Phones," "Your Home Office," and "Shape Up!" Enclosure in "Dear Friend" letter from Consumer Reports, received Feb. 1999 (in Lawrence B. Glickman's possession).
278. David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York, 1983), 318-20;
279. J. B. Matthews, "Reds and Our Churches," American Mercury, 77 (July 1953), 3-13;
280. "Editorially Speaking," 43;
281. Donahue, "Conceptualizing the Good Society," 338-39. The economist Richard Morse also linked consumerism to conservative politics: "the consumer movement actually has been a vital force in preserving, protecting, and advancing capitalist free enterprise."
282. Warne, Consumer Movement, ed. Morse, 296-97.
283. Schlink described himself as a "libertarian economist." Schlink to Ruth I. Matthews and J. B. Matthews, April 18, 1958, "Schlink, F. J. and Mary Kay, 1955-1967 and nd," box 679, Matthews Papers. In 1967 M. C. Phillips admitted to having "a confused picture of exploring how CR fits into the conservative picture." M. C. Phillips to Ruth Matthews, July 4, 1967, ibid. Persia Campbell, The Consumer Interest: A Study in Consumer Economics (New York, 1949);
284. Persia Campbell, Consumer Representation in the New Deal (New York, 1940);
285. Allis R. Wolfe, Persia Campbell: Portrait of a Consumer Activist (Mount Vernon, 1981).
286. On the Consumer Advisory Council and the "Consumer Bill of Rights," see Warne, Consumer Movement, ed. Morse, 175nn157-58.
287. For an argument that the consumer movement is central to a "new postmaterial liberalism" concerned with quality of life, rather than economic growth, see Jeffrey M. Berry, The New Liberalism: The Rising Power of Citizen Groups (Washington, 1999).
288. Works on interest-group politics that discuss the consumer movement include Frank Baumgartner and Beth L. Leach, Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and Political Science (Princeton, 1998);
289. Elisabeth S. Clemens, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago, 1997);
290. and Ronald J. Hrebenar and Ruth K. Scott, Interest Group Politics in America (Englewood Cliffs, 1982).
291. For a description of Nader as a "consumer advocate," see Thomas C. Reeves, Twentieth-Century America: A Brief History (New York, 2000), 192.
292. Cf. Berry, New Liberalism, 72;
293. and John B. Judis, "Seeing Green: Ralph Nader Betrays Himself," New Republic, May 29, 2000, pp. 25-27.
294. Denning, Cultural Front;
295. Susan Ferriss, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement (New York, 1997);
296. James A. Hodges, "J. P. Stevens and the Union: Struggle for the South," in Race, Class, and Community in Southern Labor History, ed. Gary M. Fink and Merl E. Reed (Tuscaloosa, 1994), 53-64.
297. Co-Op America publishes "National Green Pages: Products and Service
298. Monroe Friedman, Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change through the Marketplace and Media (New York, 1999);
299. and Rebecca Johns and Leyla Vural, "Class, Geography, and the Consumerist Turn: UNITE and the Stop Sweatshops Campaign," Environment and Planning, 32 (July 2000), 1193-1213.
300. On the revival of student protests, see New York Times, Jan. 31, 1999, p. 12;
301. and Liza Featherstone, "The New Student Movement," Nation, May 15, 2000, pp. 11-18.