Business: THE U.S.'s TOUGHEST CUSTOMER

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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,"