Life in 1899 – the Civil War had ended and the American north was fully mobilized for industry --- forests of smokestacks had grown alongside swelling cities. It was a period of confidence as the country opened its doors to immigrants and set out boldly to shape a new destiny. The smoke that billowed over the landscape was seen as a good omen; it meant prosperity. The intense pollution was rationalized by some doctors who declared that smoke with carbon, sulfur and iodine acted as a cure for lung diseases and that it killed malaria. While we complain today of the freeways and city streets clogged with automobiles and the vision of a horse an buggy produces nostalgia for the good old days but a century ago it produced a different feeling, with thousands of pounds of manure in the city streets, producing a powerful stench, spreading disease, filth. The horses, industrial vapors, garbage caused the more pessimistic observers to fear that American cities would disappear like Pompeii -- but not under ashes. The timely arrival of the horseless carriage prevented this, of course. It was widely hoped that the age of polluted air was coming to a close, that cities at long last would be healthier, cleaner, quieter places to live. A hundred years later we are curtailing the use of automobiles and experimenting with cleaner burning fuels because of our concern about pollution and the depletion of the ozone layer.

The Consumers League movement started modestly enough. In 1896, a small group of women in New York became indignant at the starvation wages, long hours and bad conditions of the "girls behind the counter' who waited on them in department stores. No law existed setting their hours or pay or conditions of work. Why should the women who bought the goods not use their power as consumers to insist on decent working conditions. The "Standard of a Fair House" which they worked out may seem laughable in retrospect -- with its minimum wage of $6 per week, but even that minimum was an improvement on the wages paid. It marked the beginning a of a new era, the appearance, for the first time, of the consumer on the national scene for the first time articulate. By persuasion, by presenting the fact, finally by supporting legislation, the Consumers League was born -- it spread from New York to Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvanian and in 1899, Florence Kelley was appointed secretary of a newly formed national league. When the National Consumers League was organized, sweatshops, the six-and-a half day week, and starvation wages were commonplace. Children were working alongside adults. We all know the pictures---so ably captured by Lewis Hines. The pictures we take today are of children in the fields, in carpet factories in India, sweatshops in Sri Lanka—pictures that we can take all over the globe.

Last weekend I visited our archives at the Library of Congress – to read again the letters, the telegrams, the articles and papers written by those who started the League and carried its passion and tradition throughout the century. We have a rich, exciting history representing consumers in both the marketplace and workplace.

Today of course we are not alone. About 60 years ago, ConsumersUnion began and today is known throughout the world for its quality testing and publishing of Consumer Reports. In the 60s Ralph Nader invigorated the consumer movement with his book "Unsafe at any speed" and establishing Public Citizen and many other issue-oriented consumer organizations. The League helped establish Consumer Federation of America in the late 60s. And today we are joined by consumer groups throughout the world. And large advocacy groups such as the AARP and the national Council of Senior Citizens which represent older Americans. And groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest which distributes its nutrition magazine to a million subscribers.

Our mission and the mission of all of these advocates is to learn from and build on this rich legacy. In the next few days you will share with us our look to the future of the consumer movement. Each session targets the National Consumers League agenda and the agenda for consumer groups throughout the world. We know we can't cover every consumer concern in a few days. But we believe we have chosen some of the most important ones impacting all consumers and workers as we enter the new millennium.

In addition to working on traditional consumer issues, the Consumers League remains the leading consumer group to work for fair labor standards and to oppose exploitation of children in the workplace -- not only here in the United States but globally. Our staff participated in the global march against child labor last year and we run the international Child Labor Coalition, a group of 60 organizations. And we have helped put together the Fair Labor Association, which will work for the elimination of sweatshops in the apparel and footwear industries worldwide.

While in the early part of the century our leaders went from state to state to find out who was inspecting our food and helped establish the 1906 Food and Drug law, today we work together in partnership with the United food and Commercial Workers and other consumer groups in the Safe Food Coalition. And we are active members of the National Council on Patient Information and Education which educates consumers about their medicines; the National Patient Safety Foundation dedicated to prevent errors and mistakes in medicine, and the National Coalition on Health Care with an agenda to bring access to affordable quality health care for all Americans.

Our founders approached every problem with a thorough investigation. Florence Kelley's motto was—-investigate, educate, agitate. In fact, on Wednesday we will release a nationwide survey on consumers in the 21st century. It is the first comprehensive survey on consumer issues 17 years. Today the consumers League uses today's technology to help consumers understand the products and services they buy. We run two Web sites and distribute tens of thousands of publications annually. Our staff has been on every major television network; and have interviews with the media daily.

And we agitate -- we agitate for consumer protections in financial services, health, food, safe products, the electric industry, online services and the telecommunications industry. We never hesitate to let industry and government know when we feel they are wrong. We have strong partnerships with other consumer groups, with labor, and with human rights organizations. And those partnerships have spread throughout the globe.

As the league enters our second century, we face many of the same problems of social justice and consumer protection that Florence Kelley confronted in 1899. Today the marketplace and the workplace are global. We are so fortunate to have leaders of tomorrow with us today. They are the future of the consumer movement, the human rights movement and the labor movement.