The Press: Guinea Pigs’ Friends

For the last ten years the $1,200,000,000-a-year advertising industry has been trying to decide whether it should treat “consumer education” as a flea in its ear or a bulldog at its throat. Some 29,000,000 Americans, it is estimated, are now affiliated with organizations which sponsor lectures, leaflets and confidential reports appraising if not attacking the advertised claims of every kind of branded product from mouthwash to maple syrup. Most of these are counted in such big, general groups as the Federal Council of Churches (24,000,000), General Federation of Women’s Clubs (2,000,000), Parent-Teacher Association (2,000,000), but many admen would also add the U. S. Government and the nation’s schools to their list of potential debunkers.— Last week the American Druggist, Hearst-owned monthly that goes to 43,000 of the 58,000 retail druggists in the U. S., sought public support for the most ambitious counterattack to date on what it called “sensational, destructive propaganda” of consumer groups. Conceived by elegant, tweedy, grey-mustached Editor Louis J. F. Moore, the Druggist’s campaign is based on a frank appeal to buyers to put their trust in the biggest ads. Keynote: “WHO’S A GUINEA PIG? . . . The real guinea pigs are the people who experiment . . . take chances . . . with products which are NOT backed by a well-known house.”

This theme will run through a series of full-page ads, starting in November, in the Druggist’s big sister, Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan (circulation: 1,850,000), with an added plug for important Druggist customers like Absorbine, Jr. Fletcher’s Castoria, Seiberling’s Dry-wear Latex Baby Pants. Only cost to them will be $10 worth of products a month as prizes in a window-display contest. Text is being prepared free by eight leading advertising agencies. “Cooper-ating” editorials will be released each month in 20 Hearst daily newspapers (combined circulation: 4,500,000).

Politely omitted from the Druggist’s copy are the names of its two principal targets—lean, freckled, didactic Frederick John Schlink, of Washington, N. J., and dark, intense Arthur Kallet of Manhattan. Earnest consumers know that Engineers Schlink and Kallet began a beautiful friendship in 1928 when both were working for American Standards Association; made it pay in 1933 by co-authoring a best-selling expose of advertising fakes and frauds (100,000,000 Guinea Pigs); ended it in bitterness in 1935 when Kallet backed a strike of technicians and office workers at Schlink’s Consumers’ Research. Inc. Kallet resigned as C. R. secretary, started Consumers Union of United States, Inc., aided by other C. R. experts who had been fired or quit. Since May 1936, when C. U. published its first bulletin, it has grown fast, now claims 60,000 members, of whom 47,000 pay the full membership fee of $3 a year. (There is limited membership for $1.) C. R.’s has stayed close to 60,000 since the strike, all but a few thousand student members paying the full $3.

The Consumers’ Research idea, which Consumers Union took over bodily, is to apply impartial laboratory tests to the advertised claims of trademarked products, sell the results in printed bulletins. C. R. grades its findings under “Recommended, Intermediate, Not Recommended”; C. U. uses “Best Buys, Also Acceptable, Not Acceptable.” Both organizations are nonprofit. In its last nonconfidential bulletin C. R. graded mechanical refrigerators, tennis shoes, gas ranges, croquet sets (it found mail order croquet balls are often “out of balance”). C. U.’s September report discussed shirts, shampoos, children’s shoes, canned peas. C. R. has acquired a pleasant cluster of stone and frame buildings around its lab oratory (an old feed-mill), keeps geese in a nearby stream. C. U. operates in barren offices in lower Manhattan. Most impor tant difference between the two services is that C. U. reports on labor conditions un der which articles are made, is strongly prolabor. Its friendly relations with un ions and the liberal press (which alone accepts its kind of advertising) give it a sharp advantage in a field where labor-consciousness is highly prevalent. Since the C. R. strike, Schlink is convinced that organized labor’s interests are not those of consumers, made no objection when his close adviser and Vice President Joseph B. (“Once a Red”) Matthews, told the Dies Committee that Shirley Temple and John L. Lewis had done their bit for the Communists (TIME, Sept. 5).

No advertiser has ever sued C. R. or C. U. for knocking his products, nor has the honesty of their intentions been successfully questioned. But manufacturers, some of whom spend millions on laboratory research and who figure that neither C. R. nor C. U. can gross more than $200,000 a year (most of which must go for salaries and printing), are sometimes pretty acid about the quality of research on which these organizations undertake to pass judgments that may cost businessmen thousands of dollars. The consumers’ organizations reply that much of their testing is done free in universities, private laboratories or at small cost by the Government.

At rustic Washington, remote from angry advertising agents and salesmen, the Schlinks (she is Mary Catherine Phillips, author of Skin Deep, an “expose” of the cosmetic industry) live in an old farmhouse heated by a kerosene floor burner, scrub their teeth with chalk, their laundry with soap mixed by “Ma” (Mother-in-law) Phillips. Since the “unhappiness” in 1935, he has not seen 36-year-old Arthur Kallet, once his close friend. The only thing they have in common now is a reforming urge toward guinea pigs.

* Government bureaus engaged in “consumer education” have multiplied under the New Deal now include AAA’s Consumers’ Counsel Division, Home Economics Bureau, and Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture, the Office of Education. Admen claim that many home economics teachers are ”influencing the buyers of tomorrow by studied and continuous attacks on advertising and advertised products.”