In the Public Interest

Back in the Sixties I was traveling thru an Asian country and was astonished to observe even middle class families regularly buying imported ice cream, imported crackers & imported water from Europe. Today, the modest to quite affluent classes in the United States are buying imported Swedish ice cream, French Perrier, British crackers and Swiss…

Every so often when I read complaint letters by consumers complaining of mistreatment by sellers, I think of Davis, California -­that gradually remarkable city of 37,000 people located in a farming region near Sacramento. Davis received some national publicity in the late Seventies because of major successes in energy conservation, including a high percentage of…

News about motorists being saved in highway collisions by airbags is increasing in frequency these days. Sometime later this year, there will be in the United States 100,000 cars equipped with airbags — mostly driver-side only, and mostly recent Mercedes models. The rest include twelve-year-old GM cars — with full front seat airbags — a…

SAN DIEGO — In this perennially growing part of the country, the average price for a detached single family used home reached $144,800 last month. This item in the local newspaper reminded me how little change is under way in our country for more efficient housing construction before the next Japanese import invasion of manufactured…

Business advertisements do more than sell; they also promote certain values, some of which reek with the stench of greed and exploitation. Two recent ads were quite in accordance with such exudation. In the pages of the New York Times, there has been a running commercial message by the Franklin New York Tax-Free Income Fund…

Last week in this column, I wrote about Alar — a chemical applied to many apple orchards in this country to make apples grow uniformly and become redder and firmer. Alar has been found to be an animal carcinogen by several competent studies which means that it is quite likely to be a cancer-causing agent…

It was the Twenty-Fifth Annual Banquet of the Golden Plate in Washington, DC, sponsored by the business-backed American Academy of Achievement on June 26, 1986. It was invited to attend by William McGowan, CEO of the MCI Company and wondered: “Could this be his wry retaliation for the chapter we wrote on his corporate career…

If you buy fresh apples, apple juice, apple sauce or other apple products rid apples, this campaign is for you. With relatively slight effort, you can help rid apples of a cosmetic applied to this fruit that has been shown to cause cancer in animals and therefore most probably in humans as well. The fall…

Here is a story of two Senators and a President at work. Multimillionaires Ronald Reagan and Senator John Danforth (R-MO) are upset at the verdicts and settlements which a few adults and children, badly injured by defective products and toxic chemicals, have been winning in lawsuits against corporations. Joining them in this worry is Senator…

An excess of concentration by the mercantile mind can lead to displays of genuine commercial derangement. Consider two recent episodes. The first is a report that talking and scented supermarket shelves may be tried on consumers in selected markets. The sponsors of this new marketing technique would place devices that trigger a taped selling message…