ment. That figure approximates the same one that I heard when I came to work 31 years ago. Has not inflation changed it somewhat and how did you arrive at that figure?

MR. STABLER: We estimate the average savings per family to be about $150 at today's costs.

MR. R. L. THOMPSON (Maryland): Mr. Williams, Gene Smith from California mentioned college degree requirements. I would prefer that, if we are talking about accreditation of personnel, some consideration be given to other items such as attitude, moral character, and on-the-job training.

MR. WILLIAMS: Most of the things that we have discussed here this afternoon are discussed in great detail in the regional seminars for weights and measures directors and supervisors. I would recommend that you attend one of these, and you will get some answers to a lot of questions that are in your minds right now. They are well worth attending.

MR. STABLER: For those who are not familiar with these seminars, we are holding seminars for weights and measures directors and supervisors. The course content is considerably different for the two.

MR. L. A. RICK (St. Louis County, Mo.): Has there been any comparison of jurisdictions where there is a fee charge and jurisdictions where there is no fee charge so far as operations, efficiency, and so forth, is concerned?

MR. STABLER: None that I am aware of. A study of the effectiveness of enforcement programs in fee versus non fee jurisdictions would be very interesting.

MR. RICK: As I keep getting jurisdiction over more municipalities, I am having trouble in getting enough personnel. I keep contending that weights and measures should be classified the same as police, fire, and health departments, and should not have to carry its own weight. In St. Louis County, it would cost 612 cents per year per capita to cover the expenses of my office without any fees coming in. If I could convince the people what they could expect for their 612 cents per person, I think we could do a much better job.

MR. J. R. BIRD (New Jersey): Several years ago Mr. J. R. Roberts from Manchester, England, was here, and I had quite a discussion with him about accreditation and licensing. In England, weights and measures people start when they are about 18 years old, and they have a study curriculum that they have to go through. They take examinations and consider themselves professionals. In the past few years since I have come to these forums, I have seen the upgrading of the programs to what I would call professional status, and I think that many of us are beginning to feel that we are professionals. The approach that has been suggested here is a milestone in weights and measures in the United States, and I think that it should be pursued further.

MORNING SESSION-WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1971

(J. L. O'NEILL, Vice Chairman, Presiding)

THE CONSUMER CHALLENGE: WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?

by S. E. COHEN, Washington Editor, Advertising Age

As we enter the 1970's, the people of the United States are confronted with a great national debate which questions our most fundamental political and economic assumptions. Hanging over us are social and environmental problems of the most pervasive gravity. I do not believe I overstate the case when I say that many serious people-people who are by no means revolutionaries-wonder whether the political and economic institutions which have been so productive for so many of us will cope

with the world of the 1970's. I am sure it is not necessary for me to recount the blessings which have accrued to us in terms of individual liberty and opportunity for self fulfillment. Nevertheless we are discovering that our institutions, like all others, have shortcomings, and these shortcomings are catching up with us.

The concentration of unskilled and under-employed people in our urban ghettoes is a product of our institutions too, and so are the clouds of smog hanging over our cities, the contaminated clams and oysters, and the desperate race to find burying space for our garbage. Henry Ford II recently cautioned us against attributing these problems to scapegoats-to the government officials and businessmen who have been making the big decisions. But in a sense he merely dramatizes the seriousness of what we face. For if these problems are not the doings of evil men-which they certainly are not-then they must represent a normal side effect of our system. Since the problems are here, and very real, it is obvious they will continue to get worse if we continue to leave our public decisions to the kind of happenstance we have tolerated in the past.

The debate over the adequacy of our institutions confronts the advertising and marketing world through the phenomenon we designate as "consumerism." Consumerism says we have been giving businessmen too much freedom to determine what is marketed and how it is promoted. In a thousand and one different ways, the consumerists press for ground-rules imposed by society which seek to insure that the competitive process remains within perimeters that preclude

the marketing of products and the use of selling techniques involving potential harm to the individual, the environment, and the values of our nation.

It is too soon to speculate about the degree of change the consumerists expect to achieve. Two important articles, one by John Cabot Lodge in the Harvard Business Review and the other by Prof. Charles Reich of Yale Law School (the controversial book, "The Greening of America"), offer something of an overview. Both say, in effect, that we must find some new balance between the public and private sectors if we are to muster the muscle we will need to deal with such problems as the renovation of our cities and the restoration of our environment. In the pragmatic way of the politician, President Nixon seems to be addressing himself to the same problem. Through revenue sharing, for example, he seeks to revitalize state and local government as additional centers of power to improve the performance of the public sector.

Behind these discussions, regardless of the vocabulary used, is the growing fear that our political and economic institutions produce waste, both human and material, on a scale which is no longer tolerable. An analogy is drawn between the way we temporary residents of this globe treat the earth's resources and the way we expect the trust officer of a bank to manage an estate. If the trust officer dissipated the estate with the abandon that we use the earth's resources—— which, after all, are the heritage of posterity-that officer would be jailed.

Consumerism and environmentalism, two of the major forces which have moved into the political scene during the past decade, come from a common root and have common purposes.

The people who have been raising these issues inevitably begin to question the most basic assumptions which marketing people have held about the social utility of the process of competitive product innovation itself. These critics are not necessarily ungrateful for the material comforts that have come their way as products are refined and improved. But they are applying cost-benefit factors which indicate some so-called progress may be beyond the means of our society.

Ultimately, we reach the heart of the dilemma: How can we retain the vast potential good of competitive free enterprise as a provider of goods and services, while at the same time assuring that the public's safety and welfare-and the resources of this globe which are the heritage of posterity-are not left to chance?

In a moment I will move on to the next segment of this discussion. Meanwhile I urge you to keep in mind this crucial fact: As a nation we have profound confidence in the proposition that our needs for goods and services are best served when left to the creative force of the private sector. The incentive for the private sector is, of course,

the opportunity to profit and personal gain. But society's interest is solely the goods and services it needs.

Private enterprise will remain the mainstay of our economy only if society is satisfied with its performance as a supplier of goods and services. And society will remain satisfied only so long as it believes the price is right, not only the price in dollars, but also the price in terms of the impact on our resources and our values.

Until now I have been describing the deepseated forces for change which are at work. When consumerism first emerged in the early 1960's, many businessmen were certain it was a gimmick contrived by political opportunists, and it would go away if only Esther Peterson was driven from the White House staff. In view of what I have just described, I trust you can see why this was a case of wishful thinking on the part of people who were refusing to see the world. around them.

Consumerism is deeprooted, involving millions of poor and underprivileged people who may not be articulate, but who know when they are being cheated, and tens of millions of affluent suburbanites (the kind who do not normally look to government for help) who are weary of the insults and indignities of an impersonal and opportunist society. Automation, affluence, mass merchandising, and urbanization have changed the quality of life in America, and not always for the better. In this transformation, the individual finds the competitive marketing system a mixed blessing which brings unmatched material possessions to all of us, but sometimes exacts a price in other than money.

Consumers have found themselves frustrated by machines too complicated to service, and frustrated by reports that they have been eating foods containing chemicals of questionable safety. Even the multitude of product choices becomes a mixed blessing as the consumer struggles to make value comparisons and maintain his possessions.

Beyond this, there are the environmental catastrophes that can develop from competitive product innovation. The marketer does his thing in terms of what will sell, and the consumer, no less materialistic, contentedly indulges himself. Consider, for a moment, the oneman, one-car phenomenon, as millions of sovereign suburbanites migrate bumper to bumper into our cities, spewing their trails of hydrocarbons and lethal lead behind them. The motor titans did not plot to smother our cities in smog. They simply kept outdoing each other with bigger and fancier and more powerful cars because their record books showed that was the way to improve their market share and their earnings. Consumers found this an agreeable way of life; and we were deeply involved before we sensed that unpleasant, and forbidding, implications had been overlooked.

Consumerism and environmentalism is insisting that we reappraise our assumptions about the rights and obligations of businessmen in general and marketers in particular. For the next few moments, let us explore some of the points of contact.

Friction Point No. 1: Product safety-safety for the individual and safety for the environment.--Next week the Senate Commerce Committee will begin hearings on product safety legislation. There is a substantial amount of agreement in principle about what needs to be done. There will continue to be problems galore. But we are equipping ourselves to prevent the mass merchandising of products which become hazardous under normal conditions of use, and we are improving the prospect that the tested and properly engineered product will not be displaced by shoddy and carelessly made products offered at attractive discounts.

In the regulation of drugs, and in the control of water and air pollution, we are often dealing with problems which are on the frontier of knowledge. Often the public may be demanding a certainty which human experience is unable to provide. Nevertheless, someone has to try. So we are going to have more laws and regulations in these areas. Moreover, we are going to find the public temper getting shorter and shorter with opportunists who complicate the incomprehensible with self-serving advertising that misstates problems and their solutions.

Friction Point No. 2: The technological gap between the ability of sellers to sell and the ability of consumers to comprehend what they are buying. This is due in part to the products, which are often incredibly complicated. But it is also due to selling techniques, which are often designed to compound the confusion.

Advertising is less blatantly deceptive than in the past. But it may be more subtle in implying more than it really says. Congress and the FTC are both responding by demanding that advertisers be prepared to disclose documentation behind their performance claims. This fall, in an effort to update itself on the psychological tricks that are used in fashioning ads, the FTC will be conducting a hearing that will look into what we call "the second level of communication," the hidden message visible in neither the picture nor the words when the ad is parsed or examined.

The technological gaps would exist, however, even if there were no deception as such. Marketers rightly recognize that values are often subjective and may not be measurable solely in dollars. So cars are sold as sex symbols, and teenagers are told hair goo enhances their chance to "make it."

It does not stop at that. Food is differentiated by packaging, pricing comparisons blurred by odd-ounce packages and tie-in promotions. Common chemicals, rechristened with fancy names, are peddled