History of Consumer Activism

By AdeleMcAfee

  • Boston Tea Party

  • -1810, British women boycott slavery sugar

  • first "free-product" store opens in Maryland

    boycott of slave-produced goods, instigated by Quakers and freed blacks.

  • American Medical Association is founded

  • Civil War boycott/buycott of North/South

    Northerners shopped at "free produce" stores (ie. non-slave-labor), and Southerners boycotted Northern goods (wore homespun clothing).

  • "Persons operating fraudulent schemes" are forbidden from using mail

    ... which constitutes first federal power to regulate misleading advertising.

  • The Farm Journal publishes first "guarantee of advertising"

    ...assuring readers that only reputable firms will be allowed to advertise in its pages; other farm periodicals follow suit in the 1880s and 1890s.

  • National Consumers' League founded

  • National Federation of Advertising Clubs of America is founded, and takes as one of its objectives discouraging fraudulent advertising; group is subsequently renamed Associated Advertising Clubs of America, and later "of the World".

    and takes as one of its objectives discouraging fraudulent advertising; group is subsequently renamed Associated Advertising Clubs of America, and later "of the World".

  • AMA creates a Propaganda Department, renamed Bureau of Investigation in 1925, to collect and disseminate information about health quackery.

  • Upton Sinclair publishes "The Jungle"

    "The Jungle", a shocking expose of unsanitary conditions in the American meat packing industry that helps win support for federal oversight of food processing industries.

  • Pure Food and Drugs Act passes, establishing the Food and Drug Administration, which is given regulatory oversight of labels and packaging information for over-the-counter drugs but denied power to regulate claims appearing in print advertisements.

  • The influential advertising trade journal, Printers' Ink, publishes a model statute defining truth in advertising, which later passes in Ohio (1913) and New York State (1921).

  • The Sherley Amendment to the 1906 Food and Drugs Act outlaws false claims on packages and labels but not in other advertising media.

  • League of Women Shoppers established

    The League worked to increase women%u2019s consumer consciousness through a focus on women%u2019s %u201Cbuying power%u201D and its effect on local labor and consumer issues.

  • Consumers' Union founded

  • Low-income women successfully demand lower prices

    Hundreds of low-income women in Harlem successfully demand a 25% price reduction in meat.

  • Consumers' National Federation founded

  • American women boycott Japanese silk

    ... but reinforce gender standards.

  • National Association of Consumers founded

  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN

  • International Organization of Consumers Unions is founded

    The International Organization of Consumers Unions (IOCU) is founded by the British, Dutch, Belgian and US consumer movements.

  • 19% of US are simplifying/downshifting their lives

    "Nevertheless, in response to hyperconsump-
    tion and the stress, overtime, and psychological
    expense that may accompany it, a growing
    number of people (estimated at 19 percent of
    the U.S. population; Schor 1998) are simplifying
    their lifestyle."

  • Freecycle

  • Bush inaugurated, "Buy Blue" boycott countered by "Shop for George "buycott"