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Nader was able to force off the market General Motors' Corvair, which was withdrawn from production this year.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