A Brief Look Back on 100 Years of Advocacy

"To live means to buy, to buy means to have power, to have power means to have responsibility."
Florence Kelley, first Executive Secretary, National Consumers League

For 100 years the National Consumers League has carried forward this founding principle: the working conditions we accept for our fellow citizens should be reflected by our purchases. At the same time, consumers should demand safety and reliability from the goods and services we buy. Promoting a fair marketplace for workers and consumers was the League's fundamental purpose in 1899 and guides us still into our second century.

State consumers leagues emerged as part of the late 19th century social justice movement. They pressed Jane Addams and Josephine Lowell, ardent leaders of that movement, to charter the National Consumers League in New York City. Under the direction of its first executive secretary, Florence Kelley, the new national league exposed scandalous conditions in sweatshops. During the early 1900s, Kelley led efforts to:

• issue a White Label designating products made under fair working conditions

• protect in-home workers from exploitation

• promote the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Meat Inspection Act

• champion state minimum wage legislation for women

• defend Oregon's 10-hour work day law

• advocate for creation of a federal Children's Bureau and federal child labor restrictions

Along with New Jersey Consumers League Director Katherine Wiley and Louis Brandeis (who later became Supreme Court justice), Kelley made the first 33 years of the organization effective.

The leadership of the National Consumers League struggled to contend with Kelley's death in 1932, facing the burden of maintaining the group's vigor after losing its long-time leader. Lucy Randolph Mason directed the League for the next five years, and Mary Dublin (Keyserling) directed from 1938-1940. In 1939 Dr. Caroline Ware began advising Dublin regarding activities in Washington, D.C. under the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

During this time the League's most important contribution was its role in lobbying for passage of the 1938 federal Fair Labor Standards Act. This comprehensive, landmark legislation addressed issues the NCL had raised since its inception, including child labor, minimum wage, and industrial homework. Taking advantage of the expanding definition of social welfare as seen through the ideas of the Roosevelt administration, the League also advocated for:

• national health insurance

• improved food and drug safety laws

• federal pesticide monitoring

• social security legislation

From 1943-1958 Elizabeth Magee directed the NCL, transferring the group's office to Cleveland, Ohio, her home. Magee placed new emphasis on:

• extension of fair labor laws to migratory workers

• equal pay for equal work

• guaranteed compensation for workplace accidents

• disability coverage under social security

The League office moved back to the east coast to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1958.

Vera Waltman (Mayer) and Sarah Newman each served as executive director and led the organization into and through the 1960s. Waltman turned more of the League's attention to consumer protection issues, as did Newman, while continuing to monitor fair labor standards. Some of the organization's priorities during these years were:

• migratory workers health aid

• Medicare and Medicaid

• wholesome meat and poultry

• Truth-in-Packaging legislation

• food additive and color testing

•  worker safety in atomic industries

During the 1970s and 80s NCL Executive Director Sandra Willett (Jackson) increased attention to consumer education through the "Assertive Consumer" project. The League also promoted consumer participation in government decision-making, which helped open the doors of federal agencies to consumers and their views.

The 1980s saw significant changes develop in the nation's health care system. Responding to the need to provide consumers with useful information about these changes, the League, under Barbara Warden's leadership, organized a major Consumer Health Care Conference, launched a series of consumer health care guides, and established a Medicare education program. The group also:

• supported Federal Trade Commission enforcement powers

• opposed the revival of industrial homework sweatshops

• defended Social Security and Medicare

Under the direction of Linda Golodner since 1985, the League has continued to develop its consumer education programs and remained a stalwart opponent of exploitative labor by children and in sweatshops. In the late 80s, the group established both the Alliance Against Fraud in Telemarketing and the Child Labor Coalition. The Alliance led to the League's long-term program, the National Fraud Information Center, a toll-free number established in 1992 to assist consumers directly with telemarketing fraud inquiries. Today, the NCL:

• maintains two Internet world wide web sites, www.nclnet.org and www.fraud.org, where consumers may download current publications and alerts on current issues

• protects consumers through the three-year-old Internet Fraud Watch project

• promotes better working conditions for migrant farmworker families through the Children in the Fields campaign

• provides information to credit educators through the Community Credit Link newsletter

• comments frequently on matters before the Department of Agriculture, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration, and Department of Labor

• works to eliminate sweatshops through the Apparel Industry Partnership and the Fair Labor Association

• participates in the Safe Food Coalition, which promotes effective meat and poultry inspection

• distributes tens of thousands of publications annually, on topics including food and drug interaction, safe over-the-counter medication use, budgeting and credit, and telephone service

• convenes an annual conference exploring consumer issues from financial services to a sustainable environment

• advocates for consumer protections as the electric industry is deregulated by chairing the Alliance to Protect Electricity Consumers and by bringing grass roots activists to an annual conference in Washington, DC

As the League enters its second century, it faces many of the same questions of social justice and consumer protection that Florence Kelley confronted in 1899, except now the marketplace is global in a way that neither Kelley nor most who followed in her footsteps could have imagined. How do we eliminate child labor? How do we ensure food safety? What is a decent minimum wage for workers? How can privacy be effectively protected?

These questions and the new ones that will inevitably arise will challenge the National Consumers League in its next 100 years. We're looking forward to it.

other info from NCL:

health

fraud

finances

labor

food

technology

utilities

privacy

general interests

Fraud.org • LifeSmarts • StopChildLabor.org • SOSRx • Fields Of Hope • Phishinginfo.org