The GOP Discovers the Consumer

...In his re-election bid in 1968, Nelson ran ten per cent ahead of all other statewide candidates in Wisconsin, on either party ticket...

...Representative Benjamin S. Rosenthal, New York Democrat, one of the chief advocates of consumer legislation, notes that the Justice Department, confronted with the prospect of immediate court-ordered desegregation in all Southern school districts, insisted it did not have the manpower to handle the enforcement task...

...The consumer must be protected, but he must also be trained and encouraged to protect himself...

...And that is power...

...His book, "85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy," was published last year by Putnam...

...Not only was Attorney General John N. Mitchell to have the legal enforcement arm of "class actions" within his department...

...The great majority of businessmen know that it is in their self-interest to deal fairly with their customers...

...On the surface at least, it appeared that Mrs...

...Senator Philip A. Hart, Michigan Democrat, is proposing an independent Consumer Council as a Federally chartered corporation, with local units around the country where consumers could bring their complaints for prompt action...

...This is the Justice Department that goes to the Supreme Court and asks it to slow up school desegregation...

...This approach would permit low-income consumers to pool limited funds to hire lawyers and—• equally important—to form groups that could bring not only damaging litigation, but damaging publicity, against hitherto impregnable producers...

...In 1964, Nelson recalls, four or five Democratic colleagues approached him for campaign material on consumer issues...

...the Nixon proposal also required that the Justice Department or the FTC (under new Nixon appointee Casper Weinberger) move successfully against a producer or seller before any group of consumers could do so themselves...

...The lady meanwhile was surveying the political side of the issue, and as a savvy Republican she did not like what she saw...

...You can't get a shock every time you plug in the toaster, certainly, but there has to be a reasonable limit...

...The resultant howl from consumer forces on Capitol Hill quickly persuaded the President to give Mrs...

...Also, along with the clamor for environmental control, consumer clamor has extended beyond the family kitchen to the college campus, where students conditioned to political activism by civil rights and the Vietnam war are pressing for action on questions of quality rather than quantity in American life...

...There are a lot of good American words, good English words, that is, that say it just as well...

...They're the major national resource of this country—the most flexible, the most mobile, the least likely to compromise...

...Her greatest accomplishment to date, she says candidly, is that "I've seized a little of the consumer action for the Administration...

...If the student and adult consumer forces look to anybody, Nelson and Rosenthal say, it is to Nader, who is the closest they have to an ombudsman today...

...You can guess what happened...

...Although the indications are strong that business did apply heat to scale down the Nixon class action proposal, the political impact of consumer issues has penetrated the nation's executive suites as well...

...An extensive framework for providing an integrated program for consumer protection already exists within our local, state, and Federal governments...

...The package also has other features dealing with screening of private product-testing laboratories, with drug identification, consumer credit, consumer education, and product safety...

...And at Justice, the danger of clogged court calendars was raised as an argument against consumer-initiated class actions that did not have to wait for a Justice or FTC prosecution before moving—a danger specifically dismissed by Mrs...

...The impression thus left, that the consumer as such was not in the front ranks of Mr...

...Mrs...

...The critics of the Administration package also are unhappy about what it proposes and fails to propose, in the area of product safety...

...He can be hit by a car stepping off the sidewalk...

...Soon also there were high-level discussions on consumer issues in the White House, in the Commerce and—interestingly—Justice Departments...

...What happened, Nader insists, is that Mrs...

...Existing machinery for consumer protection in the Departments of Health, Education and Welfare, Agriculture, and Commerce should be improved through consolidation and coordination...

...They have 800 lawyers sitting over there and across the country perfectly capable of taking consumer cases," she told me...

...Nixon's "forgotten Americans," was reinforced shortly after his inauguration when he appointed Mrs...

...Mrs...

...Ralph Nader, the free-lance ombudsman who more than any other individual has awakened the politicians to the potential clout in consumer initiative, was quick to spot in the package the influence of the Administration's business orientation...

...It is not at all inconceivable that well-educated, eloquent, and organized consumerists -—composed of middle and upper-middle class housewives, professionals, church-goers, and wage-earners mil-itantly inspired by what they view as uncontrolled inflation and an unresponsive business system, will organize nationally to a far greater extent than they already have...

...The disadvantaged should receive special consideration under any consumer protection program...

...That toaster lived up to its billing...

...John F. Banzhaf, who led the anti-smoking advertising crusade, agrees...

...In the legislative battle ahead, while the Democrats have Nader and control of Congress, the Republicans and Mrs...

...The techniques forged in the Vietnam and civil rights protests will move into this field...

...Customers weren't willing to pay more and wait longer for their toast just to have that extra protection...

...Much of the structure necessary for an effective program of consumer protection is already there, but the coordination and cooperation that are needed to make it work are not there...

...Knauer agrees, and she defends the restriction on grounds that the FTC experience has shown that eighty-five per cent of all unfair practices against consumers fall into these eleven categories...

...Most significantly, it proposed creation of a new Division of Consumer Protection in the Justice Department to administer a new law that would permit "class actions" to be taken in Federal court...

...And at Justice, Bruce Wilson, special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Richard W. McLaren of the Antitrust Division, told me it was the threat of overburdened court calendars rather than political or business pressure that led to the proposal to limit class actions...

...If you're able to construct a color television set that doesn't leak radiation, that's the only kind that should be on the market...

...Mrs...

...Commerce Assistant Secretary Davis replies: "You've got to have a level of safety...

...You can protect him from that by erecting walls nine feet tall along the curb, make them concave so no one can get over, then build a tunnel underneath to get across to the other side...

...But his question as to how the department could hope to handle the consumer workload, even with the Administration's limitations on class actions, is dismissed as irrelevant by Mrs...

...No amount of invective will make it go away...

...We're seeing the convergence of three major movements—the poor, the middle-class consumer, and the conservationist," Nader went on...

...Twenty or thirty additional lawyers would do nothing but work to create the groundwork for class action, and the FBI could be used to do investigating...

...A system of Federal review and approval of the product-testing procedures of hundreds of private testing laboratories now issuing product "endorsements"— without checking or assessing their results—will mislead the public, the critics insist...

...One of Stans' subordinates directly involved in the legislative planning talks, Assistant Secretary of Commerce Kenneth N. Davis, Jr., acknowledged to me in an interview that the concern over harassment of business was raised, but not as a result of industry pressure...

...Unless we stay ahead of the challenges of consumerism," Yohalem went on, "unless as intelligent businessmen we either initiate change or make accommodation for it, what I can easily envisage—namely a challenge to the profit system itself—could very well receive its chief impetus from the solid, respectable citizens who constitute the mass base of consumerism...

...Nixon," is substantially based upon self-reliance in the market place and the sound balance between rights and responsibilities which accrue to businessmen and consumers under the free enterprise system...

...Knauer says Justice should bring such-and-such a suit, and they don't...

...They would consolidate broad, large consumerist organizations...

...Senator Nelson, a longtime campaigner for consumer issues who survived drug industry attempts to defeat him in 1968, says he has become a kind of Democratic coach on consumer campaigning...

...Then to condition it all on somebody else doing something doesn't make sense...

...This wisdom, though acquired some time ago by many Democrats and a few liberal Republicans, somehow seemed to have escaped the vast majority of legislators in the President's party, and Richard Nixon himself, until last summer...

...The President's consumer adviser also defends placing the enforcement arm for consumer protection in the Justice Department as the agency best staffed to handle the job...

...The idea of creating an office under Mrs...

...As a Presidential candidate in 1968, Mr...

...The shockproof toaster is the only kind that should be on the market," he insists...

...In the next year or two we're going to get more and more grass-roots involvement," he says...

...Knauer clearly hopes many Republicans will be working the same lode in the fall campaign...

...Mrs...

...It's kind of 'sneaky pete.' It has a finky connotation...

...The American standard of living," said Mr...

...And politicians, who are in the business of monitoring the public mood, have gotten the message...

...Since only class actions and not individual actions would be allowed [under the Tydings bill], we do not believe there would be any greater burden imposed on the Federal judicial machinery, and the cost to the Government would be slight...

...Whereas Mrs...

...It sought expanded powers for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate unfair and deceptive practices on a broader front...

...In Philadelphia, there were always crooked lawyers going around saying, 'I'll get your money back for you.' " Now, apparently, the lady who earlier had called the private bar "the sleeping giant of the consumer field" no longer is in such a hurry to wake it up...

...Knauer have the President of the United States, and for that reason the outcome is far from clear...

...This movement is going way out of the supermarket...

...Rogers back to the free-enterprise system, replacing her with another lady with less suspect professional—if not political—credentials, Mrs...

...All levels of government should constantly strive to develop and communicate a better understanding of the advantages that have accrued to the American consumer as a result of the free enterprise system, effective enforcement of just laws, and a thoroughly informed, self-reliant consumer...

...Knauer, for her part, says she doesn't want to be called the consumer's ombudsman...

...This limitation and the others were written into the Administration package, she insists, because "we were suddenly faced with the prospect that the courts could be completely overwhelmed, and crooked lawyers would be encouraged...

...That's an awful lot of muscle the average consumer doesn't have, nor would I have that muscle...

...The lobbyists will be the students...

...Virginia Knauer...

...What is needed, they say, is a separate agency whose only constituency is the consumer...

...Knauer was to speak for him, and in short order she began to do so before Congress with zest and a flair for publicity...

...That is, Justice or the FTC would have to take a case of fraud or deception to court and win it before any private class actions could be brought to gain damages from the same defendant...

...For the first time, however, the outlook for significant consumer legislation is promising to the housewife because consumer action is an idea whose time has come politically...

...and a vice president of the U.S...

...JULES WITCOVER is a member of the Washington bureau of The Los Angeles Times...

...The idea of class action is to encourage and make it possible for individuals to take action...

...Knauer seemed to be all for the idea, and she stressed the virtues of having private lawyers lead the way...

...Right now, though, her title is the least of her problems...

...Knauer had brought the millenium in consumer affairs...

...He operates his own version of such an office, and similar independent teams are springing up among young law school graduates, inspired by the Nader example...

...In 1968, about fifty sought his help...

...Consumerism is no passing fad...

...The class action controversy is not the only one that will heat up the consumer debate in Congress this year...

...Government that wouldn't listen sparked the war protest...

...Both parties realize they have a high-visibility, low-cost issue that affects every voter, coming at a time when spiraling inflation heavily assaults his pocketbook...

...Rogers mainly had been slated to lead a consumer task force for the President, Mrs...

...That kind of thinking, Swankin says, illustrates perfectly the lack of the consumer's point of view in existing Government departments and agencies...

...Against the small majority of businessmen who do not, who engage in fraud and misrepresentation, the full protective forces of Government should be brought to bear...

...Nader professes to see such a trend already, though not in any formal organization...

...The only problem was that it took twice as long to make a piece of toast and cost twenty per cent extra...

...Knauer to "give every American consumer a permanent voice in the White House...

...Knauer was disinclined to see the Nixon Administration inject itself into consumer activism, the impression was misleading...

...The plan called for creation of a new Office of Consumer Affairs under Mrs...

...It is not a sometime whim of the market place...

...If the Sixties were the decade of student demonstrators, the Seventies will be the decade of student investigators...

...They cite a speech he made in December to the National Marketing Advisory Committee in which he defended consumer action as a valid and inevitable issue, but then added: "You may have heard about the electric toaster that was guaranteed not to give an electric shock no matter how badly it was misused...

...Chamber of Commerce, sounded this warning: "Now make no mistake...

...Seven or eight years ago, when I was running on consumer and environmental issues," Nelson told me, "others would ask, 'What's Nelson doing, talking about the birds and the bees?' You don't hear that anymore...

...Knauer was doing fine within the Administration until she was "politicized"—made aware of the political realities...

...Tydings proposed that individual consumers be given the right to band together as a "class" and go into Federal court to seek redress against alleged fraudulent and deceptive practices by product manufacturers and sellers...

...Rosenthal, along with Senator Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin Democrat, last year proposed a Cabinet Department of Consumer Affairs, but the Rosenthal bill since has been scaled down to call for an independent Consumer Protection Agency...

...And under the Nixon bill, only class actions falling within eleven specific fraudulent or deceptive practices listed in the law could be initiated...

...Soon she was touring Congressional offices, needling Republicans to cut into the Democrats' near-monopoly on consumer legislation, and getting the ear of the President himself...

...And James T. Lynn, general counsel of the Commerce Department, adds: "A child can get hurt a lot of ways other than from a toaster...

...We need new leadership that will guarantee the American public that legitimate complaints are presently investigated and, when appropriate, effective government action is taken...

...Nixon was distinctly squishy-soft on consumerism, confining his rhetorical espousal of the housewife's cause to the usual party dogma about making the dollar worth a buck again through Federal budgetary prudence...

...In this debate, too, Stans wears the horns in the consumer activists' eyes...

...The Justice Department is the lawyer for the regulatory agencies," he says...

...Nor can its basic demands be met through current market techniques...

...the consumer needs somebody with independent authority to represent him and press his jcomplaints before Congress and all Government agencies, including the FTC...

...They would become major political forces...

...And it really worked...

...I don't like the word," she says...

...They will discover and picket the local defrauders and polluters...

...Knauer is a blonde and vivacious fifty-four-year-old grandma from Pennsylvania who headed, in her words, "the best state consumer agency in the country" and had the requisite political background and antennae as a former Republican city councilwom-an in Philadelphia...

...This year I think about half of Congress will run on consumerism," he says...

...Chairman Weinberger says it is his intent to make the Commission more activist—to investigate and seek out consumer cases in the field, rather than simply adjudicate those brought to its attention...

...The notion that Mrs...

...We believe that the private bar is the sleeping giant of the consumer field, that no Government agency could do the job of aiding consumers as well as an aroused bar properly motivated," she said...

...It's horrendous...

...business that wouldn't listen has catalyzed consumer protest...

...In the White House, Presidential assistant Peter M. Flanigan and others were said to have expressed fear that opportunistic lawyers—"consumer ambulance-chasers"—would prey on unwitting consumers, herd them into class action groups, and collect fat fees...

...Knauer...

...Nader says the answer is simply "an in-house governmental law office" to investigate and research fraud and deception and take the evidence to other Government agencies for the consumer...

...They'll mobilize themselves...

...Knauer in the White House also is challenged by most consumer advocates as more show-biz than substance, and as an invitation to more of what Nader calls "politicization...

...Willie Mae Rogers, dispenser of the Good Housekeeping Institute's product-pushing seal of approval, as his special adviser on consumer matters...

...As for the eleven categories, Wilson said, "if you pass a law saying it's illegal to engage in unfair and deceptive practices, you have to tell business what they are...

...In his campaign bible, a 194-page soft-cover book called Nixon on the Issues—ground out on a crash basis to meet criticism that he was campaigning on generalities—only one of 227 statements dealt with consumer protection...

...If this testimony suggested, however, that Mrs...

...In a speech to the American Management Association, Aaron S. Yohalem, senior vice president of Corn Products International, Inc...

...Suppose Mrs...

...But Rosenthal says that won't do...

...But the question isn't muscle, Nader says, it's focus...

...Inflation is going to get worse, and that's the ignition...

...The Administration proposal seeks to give the consumer the louder voice such an independent agency would provide, by broadening the powers of the FTC...

...One of her most notable appearances was on last July 28, before a Senate subcommittee considering a bill sponsored by Senator Joseph D. Tydings, Maryland Democrat, that goes to the heart of the consumer problem...

...The attitude, says David Swankin, Washington representative of Consumers Union, indicates a lack of commitment to attacking the product safety problem...

...I don't think anybody is going to recommend that...

...Knauer can represent these forces is dismissed by the Administration critics...

...How can it be the lawyer for the consumer...

...You can't rely on Justice, or the FTC, to do anything for you...

...Nixon sent a multipurpose consumer package to Congress...

...Knauer in her earlier testimony on the Tydings bill...

...on October 30, with little fanfare, and to the surprise of veteran consumer advocates in Congress, Mr...

...The chief villain in the piece, he says, was Secretary of Commerce Maurice H. Stans, who, feeling heat from industry, complained that unlimited class actions would subject business to endless harassment...

...Other consumer campaigners like Senator Warren Mag-nuson, Washington Democrat, and Rosenthal had similar success...

...And that single observation amounted to a promise to American business that while a Nixon Administration would try to bring better "coordination" in existing Federal, state, and local consumer programs, no significant new legislation would be sought...