Special Collections and University Archives: Labor and Consumer Rights

Erma Angevine was a consumer advocate who served as a consumer columnist and assistant editor of Cooperative News Service issued by the Cooperative League of the U.S.A., as director of women's activities and consumer specialist at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, as executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, and as president of the National Consumers' League. The papers include writings, speeches, and testimony relating to Angevine's activities as a consumer advocate. The papers also frequently include copies of relevant by-laws, directors' manuals, minutes, annual reports, newsletters, and publications from the organizations for which Angevine worked.

The Consumers League of New Jersey was established in 1900 as an affiliate of the National Consumers' League by a group of middle-class women seeking to improve the working conditions of women and children in industry through public education and legislative action. It sought reform through child labor laws, minimum wage and maximum hour laws, and legislation regulating factory, retail, household, and migrant working conditions, including mandated improvements in workplace health standards and safety. The organization shifted its agenda during the 1960s and 1970s to issues such as consumer credit, consumer fraud, food prices, the use of pesticides and food additives, national health insurance, and environmental pollution.
The League's records consist of executive committee minutes, annual meeting files, president's files, executive secretary's files, legislative files, financial and membership records, child labor files, consumer credit files, Medicare and Medicaid files, migratory labor files, minimum wage files, pesticides files, radiation poisoning files, workers' compensation files, subject files for other areas of concern, anniversary celebration files, biographical and historical files, consumer conferences files, publications, Consumer Education Foundation files, Consumer Federation of America files, photographs, and scrapbooks.

The records document the operations of Consumers' Research, Inc., a pioneering consumer testing and rating agency, the evolution and reliability of hundreds of consumer products throughout the 20th century, and a wide spectrum of left-wing and anti-communistic political views held or investigated by Consumers' Research.
The collection consists of technical files relating to products tested and rated by Consumers' Research including product information, many product photographs, packaging, advertisements, and specific test results; general files relating to foods, food adulteration, cosmetics, medicine, tobacco, the consumer during World War II, consumerism, Consumers Union, merchandise marketing, government and the consumer (mostly during the New Deal), Consumers' Research Strike (1935), and Food and Drug Administration legislation; and administrative files concerning the operation of Consumers' Research, organizational goals and history, and circulation of Consumers' Research publications including subscriber correspondence, policies, legal matters, speeches, personnel files, Board of Directors minutes, financial materials, publicity and promotion, manuscripts and reviews of books such as F.J. Schlink and Arthur Kallet's 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs, and Consumers' Research's assistance to educational and other organizations.

Papers of Mary Lang Dyckman, social worker and former president of the Consumers League of New Jersey. Materials documenting Dyckman's substantial activity in social causes include files on child labor, migrant labor, and worker's compensation. Subject files pertain in part to the interests and activities of the Consumers League of New Jersey and encompass issues such as minimum wage legislation. Many of the booklets, pamphlets, reports and other materials Dyckman used to inform herself and others about social concerns are found in the reference publication files.

Correspondence, research and subject files, biographical and bibliographic files, files concerning various consumer organizations, speeches, publications, and other papers; together with reports, transcripts of testimony, notes of meetings, agenda notebooks, and research documents, of the National Commission on Product Safety, and materials from other national, state, and local bodies on which Margolius served. Includes correspondence with publishers and other material relating to his publications. Major subjects include advertising, automobiles, consumerism, credit, food, housing, insurance, money management, safety, and vitamins.

Minutes, correspondence, reports, clippings, pamphlets, and data on migrant labor legislation (1950-1968); together with bibliography (1966) compiled by Consumers' League of New Jersey.