THE U.S.'s TOUGHEST CUSTOMER

MIDWAY through lunch at a fashionable Washington restaurant not long ago, a young man named Ralph Nader stopped suddenly and gazed down in disgust at his chef's salad. There, nestled among the lettuce leaves, lay a dead fly. Nader spun in his chair and jabbed both arms into the air to summon a waiter. Pointing accusingly at the intruder on his plate, he ordered: "Take it away!" The waiter apologized and rushed to produce a fresh salad, but Nader's anger only rose. While his luncheon companions watched the turmoil that had erupted around him, Nader launched into a detailed indictment of sanitation in restaurants. He pointed out that flies killed by insect spray often fall into food, thereby providing customers not only with an unappetizing bonus but also with a dose of DDT--or something even stronger.

Restaurant owners had better take heed. Nader is by now an almost legendary crusader who would--and could --use a fly to instigate a congressional investigation. As the self-appointed and unpaid guardian of the interests of 204 million U.S. consumers, he has championed dozens of causes, prompted much of U.S. industry to reappraise its responsibilities and, against considerable odds, created a new climate of concern for the consumer among both politicians and businessmen. Nader's influence is greater now than ever before. That is partly because the consumer, who has suffered the steady ravishes of inflation upon his income, is less willing to tolerate substandard, unsafe or misadvertised goods. It is also because Nader's ideas have won acceptance in some surprising places. Last week, for example, Henry Ford II went farther than any other automobile executive ever has in acknowledging the industry's responsibility for polluting the air and asked--indeed, prodded--the Government to help correct the situation. The auto companies must develop, said Ford, "a virtually emission-free" car, and soon. Ford did not mention Ralph Nader, but it was not really necessary. Nader is widely known as a strong critic of the auto industry for, among other things, its pollution of the atmosphere.

Nader was able to force off the market General Motors' Corvair, which was withdrawn from production this year. Corvair's sales had plunged by 93% after Nader condemned the car as a safety hazard in his bestseller, Unsafe at Any Speed. That influential book, and Nader's later speeches, articles and congressional appearances, also forced the Department of Transportation to impose stricter safety standards on automobile and tire manufacturers.

Advocate, muckraker and crusader, Nader has also been almost solely responsible for the passage of five major federal laws. They are the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966. the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act, the Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act and the Wholesale Poultry Products Act, all of 1968. This week Congress will almost certainly pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which Nader and a group of insurgent mine workers supported against the wishes of complacent union leadership. The act contains stiff preventive measures against working conditions that can cause black lung.

Nader was the first to accuse baby-food manufacturers of imperiling the health of infants by using monosodium glutamate, a taste enhancer that medical research shows can cause brain damage in some animals. The three largest producers of baby food have since stopped using it. In addition, Nader's repeated warnings about the dangers of cyclamates and DDT helped to nudge the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to press research that led to recent federal restrictions on their use. From witness chairs and podiums, he has also taken aim at excessively fatty hot dogs, unclean fish, tractors that tip over and kill farmers, and the dangerous misuse of medical X rays. He has revealed that some color-television sets were recalled for leaking excessive amounts of radiation. (The Federal Trade Commission has publicly warned viewers to sit at least six feet away from color tubes.)

The Erosion of Life

To many Americans, Nader, at 35, has become something of a folk hero, a symbol of constructive protest against the status quo. When this peaceful revolutionary does battle against modern bureaucracies, he uses only the weapons available to any citizen--the law and public opinion. He has never picketed, let alone occupied, a corporate office or public agency. Yet Nader has managed to cut through all the protective layers and achieve results. He has shown that in an increasingly computerized, complex and impersonal society, one persistent man can actually do something about the forces that often seem to badger him --that he can indeed even shake and change big business, big labor and even bigger Government.

"My job is to bring issues out in the open where they cannot be ignored," says Nader, chopping his hands, as he often does when he speaks. "There is a revolt against the aristocratic uses of technology and a demand for democratic uses. We have got to know what we are doing to ourselves. Life can be --and is being--eroded." To prevent that erosion, he unmercifully nags consumer-minded U.S. Senators, pushing them to pass new bills. When their committees stall, he phones them by day, by night, and often on Sundays. "This is Ralph," he announces, and nobody has to ask, "Ralph whoT

Nader today is widening his sights. A lawyer by training, he is investigating the affairs of Covington & Burling, the Washington law firm headed by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson. At one time or another, Covington & Burling has numbered among its clients 200 of the nation's 500 biggest corporations, and Nader wants to determine just how much influence the firm has inside the Government. Most of all, he is probing into the affairs of ossified federal bureaucracies. "We hear a lot about law and order on the streets," he says, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "I thought we ought to find out how law and order operates in the regulatory agencies." How does it? "It doesn't."

Most Outstanding Man

He issued a report (now in hardcover) that scaldingly criticized the FTC and called for its reorganization; recently several FTC officials have agreed with him. He is examining laxity within agencies as diverse as the National Air Pollution Control Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration, which he says shares the blame for the fact that U.S. railways have 100 accidents a day, accounting for 2,400 deaths a year. "Regulatory agencies have failed by the most modest of standards," Nader contends, in great part because their top men are too cozy with the industries that they oversee and often use their Government jobs as stepping-stones to lucrative private careers in the same field. By his count, 75% of former commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission are employed or retained by the communications industry. This, he charges, amounts to a "deferred bribe." Agency officials who resign their jobs, Nader contends, should be barred from accepting immediate employment in the industry that they were supposedly policing.

To multiply the manpower for his campaigns, Nader has enlisted the help of vacationing students for the past two summers. Their Zola-like zeal for investigating bureaucracies has earned them the name "Nader's Raiders." Last year there were only seven Raiders, but this year the number grew to 102 law, engineering and medical students. The Raiders, who were paid a meager living allowance ($500 to $1,000 for ten weeks), delved energetically into the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Water Pollution Control Administration, occupational health agencies, the Interstate Commerce Commission and several other fiefdoms.

In anticipation of their findings, which are due to be released beginning early next year, at least one ICC official has already resigned. Meanwhile, Nader and his Raiders have accused Government authorities in general of "systematically and routinely" violating the 2 1/2-year-old Freedom of Information Act, which is supposed to entitle public access to much federal information. "If Government officials displayed as much imagination and initiative in administering their programs as they do in denying information about them," he says, "many national problems now in the grip of bureaucratic blight might become vulnerable to resolution." In line with that philosophy, one group of Raiders last month filed a suit in federal court to force the Civil Aeronautics Board to release findings on passenger complaints. Nader expects similar suits to be filed soon against the Departments of Labor and Agriculture.

Over the long run, the inspiration that Ralph Nader is providing for young Americans may prove as important to the country as his own lone battle. The Harvard Law School newspaper has somewhat generously called him "the most outstanding man ever to receive a degree from this institution," which has counted among its graduates Oliver Wendell Holmes and Felix Frankfurter. Nader is a major hero in most law schools. Two of last summer's Raiders canvassed Texas colleges and returned with 700 applications for next summer.

Critics and Champions

Nader is not universally loved for his efforts. New Left revolutionaries condemn him because he wants to improve the economic system rather than tear it down. Businessmen complain that he is a publicity-seeking gadfly and that he can be self-righteous to the point of arrogance. His most obvious weakness is that he sometimes exaggerates for effect, as when he said that frankfurters are "among the most dangerous missiles this country produces." But many businessmen, whatever their feelings about Nader's methods, applaud his accomplishments and concede that he is an important and often valuable critic. Last month a study committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce deplored "the tardiness of business in responding constructively" to consumers' criticism. The committee called on sellers to "expand information regarding safety, performance and durability of products." Nader insists that he is not "antibusiness" but simply "pro-people." He often jokes that he is as much a foe of the funeral industry as Jessica Mitford but that while she only wrote a book, "I'm trying to reduce the number of their customers."

Occasionally the people whom Nader is trying to help seem more resentful of his efforts than do his corporate targets. On his taxi rides through Washington, cabbies regularly berate him because they must now pay for seat belts and 28 other pieces of mandatory safety equipment. Nader sympathizes with them but argues that the automakers could reduce prices by at least $700 per car if they would do away with costly annual style changes. Even Lyndon Johnson, who signed the 1966 auto-safety bill into law, has found some Nader innovations irritating. On a drive across his Texas ranch, L.B.J. noticed a spot on the windshield of his new Chrysler and groped for the washer and wiper knobs. Still unfamiliar with the Nader-inspired safety feature of non-protruding knobs, Johnson pawed at the dashboard in vain while he continued to drive. Utterly frustrated, he turned to a passenger and muttered: "That goddamned Nader."

The Origins of Discontent

Paradoxically, many U.S. consumers are discontented even while they are the envy of contemporary civilization --the best-fed, best-clothed, most pampered people in history. Most companies have a self-interest in promoting product safety and performance, if only to induce customers to buy and buy again. Since the large majority of consumers do exactly that, businessmen understandably believe that they are producing the kind of merchandise that the nation wants. The average buyer probably gets more value for $1,000 spent in a current mail-order-house catalogue than in an edition of 50 years ago.

Nevertheless, many low-quality and hazardous goods find their way into the marketplace; too much is overpriced, and too little works right. Consumer protest groups, often led by women, have been organized in many states. Longtime consumer activists profess amazement that the public has waited so long to fight back. Until lately, amateur, part-time buyers have felt unequal to challenging professional, full-time sellers. Says Peter Drucker, author of The Age of Discontinuity: "We have been a very patient people by and large. Now people are fed up, and 1 do not blame them."

The movement that Nader fostered goes by the awkward name of "consumerism." It belongs to an age of discontent that has roiled campuses and ghettos, subjected old certitudes to new doubts and stimulated individual assertiveness. Economist Walter Heller says: "People are much more questioning of authority, including the authority of the marketplace."

Today's consumer is better educated than his forebears and thus less willing to accept the exaggerated salesmanship, misleading advertising, shoddy goods and even bits of deceit that buyers once considered natural hazards of commerce. He is justifiably confused by product guarantees written in incomprehensible legalese, by conflicting claims for chemical additives in gasoline and toothpaste, by food and soap that are packaged to defy easy comparison with the prices of competitive products. Though the poor and the uneducated are more systematically bilked than other groups, the current upwelling of consumer protest comes primarily from the comfortable middle class. The anger rises from the irritation of the telephone caller who cannot get a dial tone, the commuter whose dilapidated train runs 45 minutes late, or anyone at all who tries to get his auto, dishwasher or TV set properly repaired.

The Most Serious Theft

It is almost impossible to estimate the dollar loss to consumers through unscrupulous practices. The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Washington's Warren Magnuson, argues that deceptive selling is the nation's "most serious form of theft," accounting for more dollars lost each year than robbery, larceny, auto thefts, embezzlement and forgery combined. An idea of its scope comes from the case of some major drug manufacturers, which have admitted entering into a long-term price-fixing scheme that netted them at least $100 million before they were caught. Three large plumbing-fixture manufacturers were convicted not long ago, and twelve others pleaded "no contest" in a similar conspiracy involving $1 billion worth of sinks, tubs and toilets.

The human costs of unsafe products and practices are even harder to measure, though Nader can almost endlessly cite alarming statistics. "Do you realize that there are 2,000,000 needless cases of salmonella food poisoning a year?" he says. "Just think of it. And that's only one aspect. Do you realize that more Americans died on the highways by mid-October of this year than have been killed in all of the Viet Nam War? Consumers are being manipulated, defrauded and injured, not just by marginal businesses or fly-by-night hucksters but by blue-chip business firms."

The bulk of complaints against business falls into four broad categories:

> DECEPTIVE PROMOTION. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reported that commercial mouthwashes--a $212-million-a-year business--are useless for curing "bad breath," and that more than 300 other patent drug items are useless for the purposes for which they are advertised. Chicago officials recently fined 121 service-station operators who had put out curbside signs advertising gasoline at one price but charged more at the pump. Another advertising abuse involves the "bait and switch" routine. Salesmen lure customers by advertising an extremely low-priced product; but when the time comes to buy, the product is "not available" and the customer is induced or coerced to accept a costlier one. In California, the attorney general's office has found this practice used by swimming-pool contractors, home-freezer-and-meat-supply operations, and by a dealer who specialized in collecting advance payments from G.I.s serving in Viet Nam.

> HIDDEN CHARGES. A subtler method of parting consumers from their dollars is to tack on additional, often vaguely named charges. Lenders, for example, collect "service charges" and "points" that add substantially to borrowing costs. Often such charges would amount to usury under state laws if they were labeled as interest, which they simply supplement. Some retailers who mail out unsolicited credit cards try passing on the high costs of collection and theft loss to their customers. Until protests from three states prompted revisions in the plan, Montgomery Ward billed charge-account customers for credit life insurance on themselves to avoid the expense of settling with the estates of deceased buyers. Unless customers specifically requested not to be enrolled in the plan, they were billed 100 a month on each $100 owed. Although the charge amounted to pocket change for most persons, it was designed to pass on a major expense of Montgomery Ward's to the customers.

> SLOPPY SERVICE. Consumers Union, a nonprofit, private testing organization of which Nader is a board member, distributed 20 deliberately broken TV sets to New York City homes and asked neighborhood repairmen to fix them: only three of the 20 were properly serviced. Television, air-conditioner and many other repairmen commonly refuse even to look at a cantankerous appliance until they collect a substantial "estimate fee." Texas authorities have forced finance companies to return $1,900,000 to victims of unscrupulous and outrageously sloppy home-improvement firms. Automobile repairing has broken down so badly that automakers have instituted training programs for mechanics, and are developing new gadgetry for electronic diagnosis of engine troubles.

> UNSAFE OR IMPURE PRODUCTS. Consumers can get information about the nutritive value and ingredients of dog food more easily than about some forms of canned meat; the chairman of the Senate Consumer Subcommittee, Utah's Frank Moss, likes to point out this discrepancy by reading the can labels to his audiences. When Consumers Union analyzed federally inspected pork sausage, inspectors found that one-eighth of the samples contained "insect fragments, insect larvae, rodent hairs and other kinds of filth." Investigators for the National Commission on Product Safety have found many potentially lethal toys on the market. Eleven Philadelphia children recently had to have tiny toy darts, which they accidentally inhaled from a plastic blowgun, removed from their lungs. Other hazards include a child's electric stove that produced temperatures of 600DEG and a baby's rattle that was held together with spikelike wires. Under a law signed last month, the Government can ban the sale of toys that present electrical, mechanical or heat hazards. But the law does not become effective until after the Christmas buying season, and Congress disregarded a commission recommendation that the Department of Health, Education and Welfare pretest some kinds of toys for safety. By the estimate of the Product Safety Commission, about 100,000 persons each year are injured when they walk through safety glass; yet builders have repeatedly refused to make it stand out better by marking it clearly. Nader has charged over nationwide TV that complex electronic medical equipment causes large numbers of unreported electrocutions in hospitals; doctors have estimated, he said, that anywhere from 1,200 to 12,000 patients per year are electrocuted. Official safety regulations, where they do exist, are often loosely enforced. Last month the Department of Transportation announced that one-quarter of the tires that it has tested this year failed to meet a significant test: standards originally devised by tire manufacturers themselves.

Politicians at every level of government recognize that consumerism has become a vote-catching issue. There has been a surge of activity to protect the consumer from fraud in the marketplace, and sometimes from his own bad judgment. Under a new law in Massachusetts, people who are fast-talked by door-to-door salesmen into signing contracts for unwanted goods can now cancel the deal within ten days. California's Department of Professional and Vocational Standards has instituted a television-repair inspection system that has trimmed $15 million a year from fraudulent fix-it bills. The department tests the honesty of any suspicious repair outfit by planting deliberately broken sets in private homes; if the repairman makes unnecessary charges, his license is lifted.

The Belated Protectors

Nearly all major cities and about 22 states have created offices of consumer affairs, many of them headed by attractive and energetic women with whom housewives identify easily. The national prototype is Mrs. Virginia Knauer, 54, a Philadelphia grandmother who served as Pennsylvania's consumer adviser and last April was chosen by President Nixon to head the federal consumer program. Bess Myerson Grant, the 1945 Miss America who is now New York City's commissioner of consumer affairs, recently sent inspectors out to test restaurant hamburgers. When nearly one-third of the burgers failed to meet the city's all-beef standards, Mrs. Grant complained loudly about "shamburgers," 156 people were subpoenaed, and those found guilty were fined. During her first year as Chicago's commissioner of consumer sales, Jane Byrne issued 1,144 tickets and collected $58,000 in fines. Some supermarkets were caught placing "cents off" labels on items that were selling at the regular price or even higher.

All too few consumer watchdogs, however, are effective. The limp performance results partly from austerity budgets and from the reluctance of many juries to convict businessmen under criminal codes. The appointees to consumer-affairs jobs frequently have little experience in government. California's Kay Valory, consumer counsel to Governor Ronald Reagan, has not testified in three years before any committee considering consumer legislation. She recently made the extraordinary recommendation that buyers shun the "very narrow" testing reports of Consumers Union in favor of the handbook of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Winning in Washington

It has been left to the Federal Government to provide most of the protection for U.S. consumers. Congress has already enacted at least 20 major pieces of consumer legislation despite strenuous efforts by most industry lobbyists to defeat them. The lobbyists have been considerably more successful in keeping enforcement of the new rules to a minimum. The favorite lobbyist tactic is to persuade Congress to provide only token funds to administer new laws. Enforcement of the 1966 Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, adopted over vigorous objections from the food industry, has been all but abandoned by the FDA: it has funds to pay only two employees to do the job. The FTC initially received enough money to inform retailers of the new truth-in-lend-ing law, effective last July 1, but not enough to enforce it.

Six weeks ago, President Nixon called on Congress to enact a "buyers' bill of rights." The President declared: "Consumerism is a healthy development that is here to stay." Among other things, he proposed the establishment of a new consumer division in the Justice Department and expanded powers that would enable the FTC to seek injunctions against unfair business practices. As Nader and other consumer activists have long been demanding, the President also asked Congress to allow consumers to join together in "class action" damage suits in federal courts against errant manufacturers or merchants. If found guilty of deceptive trade practices, manufacturers would have to bear all legal fees and pay damages to all who sue. Nixon disappointed consumer advocates, however, by proposing that suits be limited to eleven specified offenses, including worthless warranties and false claims for a product. Moreover, consumers would be unable to go to court until the Justice Department had first established fraud through a lawsuit. Even Mrs. Knauer, the Administration's own adviser, wanted much broader measures. "Timid tiptoeing," complains Nader. "Politics turned the message into Swiss cheese."

Still, U.S. consumers stand an increasing chance of winning in Washington. The Veterans Administration recently agreed to make public its comprehensive test data on hearing-aid performance. Nader wants the General Services Administration, the principal federal purchasing agent, to release its vast store of product information, which includes test results on goods as varied as bed sheets and flatbed trucks. Legislation is now in preparation to 1) require producers of household poisons to render their containers "childproof" by making bottles and packages harder to open, 2) set up more stringent health rules in fish-processing plants, and 3) force manufacturers to guarantee the adequate performance of their products and live up to all claims that they make for them. A farther-reaching piece of legislation, being drafted by Senator Moss's Consumer Subcommittee, would set up an independent "consumer council" to act as the buying public's ombudsman. Nader has advocated the idea of a Cabinet-level consumer post for years.

What makes Nader so effective today? Much of the answer lies in his lawyer's dedication to hard facts. He makes accusations almost daily that would be libelous if untrue; yet no one has ever sued him on his charges against companies or products. He collects facts everywhere--from his audiences on campus speaking tours, from obscure trade journals and Government publications, from interviews with high officials, from secret informers in public office and private industry, from thousands of letters addressed simply to "Ralph Nader, Washington, D.C." Nader receives more mail than the majority of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, reads all the letters--but can answer few.

His first inkling that all was not well with the Corvair's suspension system came from a disgruntled General Motors auto worker who wrote him a letter. In Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader went on to single out the sporty car's rear-suspension system as an example of hazardous compromise between engineering and styling. At certain speeds and tire pressures, or in certain types of turns, he charged, the rear wheels could "tuck under," causing a driver to lose control. G.M., which eventually redesigned the system, at first did not even recall the model for checking. But executives were disturbed enough by Nader's charges to hire a Washington law firm to look into the matter. The lawyer, in turn, engaged the Vincent Gillen private detective agency to trail Nader. Purely on a fishing expedition that was to find nothing, the agency's head urged his men to uncover what they could about Nader's "women, boys, etc." Tipped by friends that investigators were looking into his private life, Nader charged publicly that he was being harassed. G.M.'s use of grade-B spy-movie tactics was fully exposed when its president, James Roche (now chairman), was summoned before a Senate subcommittee and twice apologized to Nader for the company's investigation.

In his battle for pipeline-safety legislation, Nader secured important technical data from an engineer who was fighting the installation of a gas main near his home. He first learned of the damage that pipeline explosions could cause from a professor whom he met at an M.I.T. conference. "Sometimes the things these professors casually drop at conferences send me up the wall," says Nader.

Influence On the Law

Typical of Nader's battle style was his campaign for more stringent federal meat inspection at packing plants. While speed-reading the small print of a House report on Agriculture Department appropriations, Nader noticed that it urged "further studies" of the U.S. meat-inspection program. Did that mean that there had been earlier studies showing that the U.S. had a meat problem? Indeed it did, as Nader found out when he requested a copy of the little-known study at the Agriculture Department. "Nobody ever asked for this before," said the employee who handed it to him. The study gave graphic descriptions of conditions in some meat plants.

Now Nader had his ammunition. He sent a summary of the study to the House Agriculture Committee, which was about to hold "clean meat" hearings for the first time in eight years. He quickly wrote an article for The New Republic titled "We're Back in the Jungle"--a title that echoed Upton Sinclair's classic indictment of the meat industry 60 years ago, The Jungle. He sent press releases to newspapers located near the worst plants. As a result, Nader was deluged by letters from meat handlers, meat buyers and anonymous Agriculture Department officials. He gave tips and new evidence to the Senate sponsor of the meat bill, Minnesota's Walter Mondale. What Nader's activity produced was the Wholesome Meat Act, which brings small, intrastate meat-packing plants under federal interstate jurisdiction.

One campaign leads to another. Many doctors who wrote Nader about meat urged him to investigate the steadily rising fat content of the venerable hot dog, which they said was contributing to heart disease. Nader found that average frank fat had increased in 15 years from 17% to 33% of the total content. The "fatfurter" campaign was on, and he now emphasizes it frequently in his speeches. Nader cultivates mutually helpful friendships among Congressmen, offering to let them take credit for his digging and even drafting legislative proposals for them. His chief contacts in the Senate are Magnuson, Moss, Teddy Kennedy, Wisconsin's Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire, Texas' Ralph Yarborough, Connecticut's Abraham Ribicoff and Indiana's Vance Hartke.

As a result of Nader's indictments, the Government is making many changes. "When Nader issued his report on the Federal Trade Commission, my first feeling was irritation," says an FTC commissioner, Mary Gardiner Jones. "But I feel now that the commission has pulled itself together more, and faster, than if it had not come out." Though the FTC still has a long way to go, it has lately begun to take more vigorous actions. Sample: after nearly a decade of indecision, the commission in August ordered gasoline stations and food stores that use giveaway games for promotion to inform customers as to just how infinitesimal are their chances of winning.

Though Nader has rarely done his fighting in the courtroom, he has exerted a profound influence on the law. Before his auto-safety crusade, accident injuries were blamed on faulty drivers --not faulty cars. In order to collect damages, an accident victim was usually required to prove negligence on the part of a manufacturer. But Nader contended that automakers should build "crashworthy" cars that would not cause bodily injury in a "second collision" after the accident itself. The second-collision concept is now recognized by many courts. A 22-year-old Pennsylvania college student, who suffered permanent injury when the roof of a car buckled in an accident, recently won the right to use the "second-collision" principle in a damage suit against General Motors. U.S. District Judge John A. Fullam ruled that the roof should have been built to withstand the car's rollover and that automakers are required "to provide more than merely a movable platform capable of transporting passengers from one point to another." Since the second-collision principle could be applicable to other products as well, manufacturers may become more safety-conscious and design their products to avoid injury in case of mishap.

The New Citizenship

The entire legal profession must be reformed, Nader maintains, if society is to alleviate its ailments. "The best lawyers should be spending their time on the great problems--on water and air pollution, on racial justice, on poverty and juvenile delinquency, on the joke that ordinary rights have become," he says. "But they are not. They are spending their time defending Geritol, Rice Krispies and the oil-import quota."

That is changing, in no small part because of Nader. Of the 39 Harvard Law Review editors who will be graduated next June, not one intends to join a high-paying Wall Street law firm. Instead, most plan to enter neighborhood agencies or government service--and represent the individual against the institutions. Nader believes that the rise of the youthful protester, which began in the '60s, will accelerate into the '70s. "You watch," he predicts. "General Motors will be picketed by young activists against air pollution."

Student demonstrators, he believes, will increasingly choose to become student investigators. Many of them will move to Washington and, like Nader, spend their early careers prowling among the Government-filing cabinets, searching for examples of abuse and seeking means of reform in the existing system. "This is a new form of citizenship," Nader says. At heart, he is teaching the oldest form of citizenship: that one man, simply by determined complaining, can still accomplish a great deal in a free society.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.