Consumer Reports Archives Exhibitions

Early History

Colston E. Warne, 1979

Jennie White, 1961

There is in New York City now a consumers’ laboratory which tests products, and rates them as to their quality. It is owned and controlled by organized consumers. This laboratory is called the Consumers Union. – Colston Warne, 1936

Perhaps fittingly, Consumers Union was born out of a labor dispute. In 1935, several employees at Consumers’ Research, a product testing organization in Washington, New Jersey, tried to organize a union to fight for better pay. When those employees were fired, sympathetic staff walked out in protest. The following February, a group led by Amherst economist Colston E. Warne met in New York and formed Consumers Union. Warne was named the first President, a position he would hold until retiring in 1979. Just three months after forming, Consumers Union issued its first magazine, in May 1936, and a buying guide the following year. In 2012, Consumers Union officially changed its name to Consumer Reports to reflect its identity as most people knew it.

Today, Consumer Reports has around five million members and over ten million annual visits to its website. Initially, the organization operated out of a series of buildings in Manhattan. In 1955, it moved to Mount Vernon, New York, where it remained until opening its present facility in Yonkers in 1991.

A typed document from 1936 introducing the founding of Consumers Union, a nonprofit group created to empower families with honest, pro-labor product information and protect them from unsafe or overpriced goods.

A New Consumers’ Organization, 1936

A brochure with black text on a white background describing how Consumer Reports serves labor and listing the names of CU’s Labor Advisory Committee members.

Workers as Consumers, 1936

From the outset, Consumers Union embraced its identity as a union and appealed to working class consumers and the labor movement. Its Labor Advisory Board featured prominent leaders from a number of trade and professional unions.

Consumers Union was founded with two aims: providing information and advice on consumer goods and services, and reporting on labor conditions and other issues to improve overall living standards. Throughout its history, it has sought to achieve a balance between the science of product testing and the activism of consumer education and advocacy.

A mid-century educational exhibit shows three adults examining wall displays of charts, maps, and product samples beneath a bold slogan: “Let the consumer be intelligently informed.”

Consumers Union Education Center, Mount Vernon, N.Y., 1960

A black-and-white photo shows a modest industrial building with cars parked outside and a sign in the forground reading “Consumers Union of U.S., Inc. Auto Test Division,” marking the site of mid-20th-century vehicle testing for consumer reports.

Auto test facility, Hamden, Conn., 1969

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