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Biographical Information

The following biography is entitled, "Helen Ewing Nelson Biography and Highlights as Consumer Leader" prepared by Judith Robinson, 1986 (see carton 79, folder 21).

Helen E. Nelson was born October 19, 1913 in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up on her family's farm. She graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors from the University of Colorado in economics and political science, and received a Masters degree in Economics from Mills College, California. She also conducted graduate work in economics and statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. While at the University of California, Berkeley, she was a research assistant to the Heller Committee for Research in Social Economics. She also worked as an employment insurance claims agent for the California Department of Employment and for a shipbuilding company as a women's personnel consultant. She directed planning and pricing of a budget for single working women for the California Industrial Welfare Commission. Between 1949 and 1959 she was Assistant Chief of the Division of Labor Statistics and Research and Senior Statistician for the California Department of Industrial Relations. In 1959 she was named California's first Consumer Counsel, the second such state post in the nation. Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown established the office to fill a 1958 campaign promise after learning about a similar office created four years before by executive order of New York Governor Averill Harriman. Dr. Persia Campbell had been New York Consumer Counsel, a post that was abolished with the end of Gov. Harriman's term. Gov. Brown resolved to have the California office established by statute, which the state legislature did in 1959, despite strong opposition by business interests. Helen Nelson was appointed by Brown to the post after a concerted effort on her part to attract support for the appointment. When she was interviewed by Gov. Brown, he commented, "You sure do have a lot of friends." Nelson replied, "Well, Governor, if you appoint me to this job, I'll need them." She was appointed, given an annual office budget of $64,000-$100,000 and a small staff that grew from one secretary to five personnel, including one attorney whose salary was cut out by the legislature in response to opponents to the Consumer Counsel office's activities. Mrs. Nelson served in the office from 1959 to 1966, when Gov. Brown was defeated by Gov. Ronald Reagan. She refused to resign in order to force the new Governor to recognize the importance of retaining the office. Ultimately it grew into a large state Department of Consumer Affairs. Highlights of Mrs. Nelson's term as Consumer Counsel include the establishment of a consumer constituency of housewives, labor organization members, and many others who came to recognize what the word "consumer" meant to their pocket books and life styles. Nelson's office drafted and analyzed legislation for the Governor, including a bill to include cosmetics in the state's Food and Drug law. It published numerous pamphlets and books on subjects of interest to consumers. It successfully argued for regulation of the amount of water allowed in canned hams; for truth in packaging and labeling of food products for weight and content. The Counsel instigated reforms in consumer credit laws and disability insurance benefits. It pioneered laws on "holder in due course," requiring that whoever owns a note for payment on a product also has the responsibilities of the original seller. Of her success as Consumer Counsel, Mrs. Nelson told an interviewer for the National Consumers Committee for Research and Education: "In looking back on my seven years as Consumer Counsel, I think probably the most valuable thing I did was not the laws and regulations, although there are some that give me pride. But I think I really did give the people in California a sense of themselves as consumers... They didn't have it at all when I started... The second thing I think I did was make people conscious they had rights as a consumer... We made the consumer-vendor relationship one of a legal contract and rights of both parties under that contract. What is injustice in the marketplace is just like an injustice in the criminal system." The Consumer Counsel operated independently but cooperated with the state Attorney General in law enforcement matters. Mrs. Nelson considered her role as one of "representational advocacy." Other states established similar consumer offices following California's lead. Her work in California gained her a reputation nationally and she began to be called upon by federal and other state officials to testify on legislative and regulatory issues. She appeared in the U.S. Senate to support Senator Philip Hart's truth-in-packaging bill. She testified at hearings of a commission created by President Lyndon B. Johnson to identify the reasons for the difference in prices paid by consumers for beef versus the prices paid cattlemen. She frequently was asked to testify on consumers' behalves before the Federal Food and Drug Administration, and once was cross-examined for five hours by an industry attorney on the FDA's proposal to limit the amount of shortening and other substances that could legally be added to peanut butter. After leaving the Consumer Counsel post, Mrs. Nelson and her husband, Nathan, a consultant and long-time expert on vocational rehabilitation, moved to Chicago, where Mrs. Nelson was named executive vice president of the Illinois Federation of Consumers (1968-1969). After Dr. Nelson's death in 1978, Mrs. Nelson became director of the Center for Consumer Affairs at the University of Wisconsin Extension in Milwaukee, where she served also as Professor of Economics (1969-1978). During those years she served on Gov. Patrick Lucey's Council on Consumer Affairs, the Governor's Health Care Planning Council, the Wisconsin Hospital Rate Review Commission and Blue Cross Rate Review Commission; the Wisconsin Board of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and other organizations. She participated in the establishment of a group of health programs in Milwaukee and was active as consultant and advisor to several cooperative companies, including an insurance company, a bank, and a housing foundation. Her role as a national spokesperson for consumers was enhanced by her 15 years on the Board of Directors of Consumers Union of the U.S., Inc., and 10 years on the Board of the Consumer Federation of America, for which she served two terms as president starting in 1972. She served on the Consumer Advisory Council to two Presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. She was a Public Governor and only woman on the American Stock Exchange for six years. At her retirement from the University in 1978, she was honored by the State and the Wisconsin Consumer's League. She also was honored by the Consumer Federation of America and the Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley (CA) as well as others. Not actually "retired" from active public life, Mrs. Nelson was appointed to the Federal Reserve Board's Consumer Advisory Council in 1984 for a three-year term. She served on the "Service Charges Committee" recommending Board policies and regulations dealing with consumer access to banking services and their charges. She also continued to serve on boards of consumer and social service organizations. Her role as a major influence in marketplace practices and economic issues might be measured in part by the growth of the "consumer movement" in the United States and abroad. Changing attitudes of and toward consumers were outgrowths of Helen Nelson's persistent philosophy that consumers had rights and should argue their cases in legislatures, Congress, regulatory bodies, and courts. Her quiet but persuasive education of both consumers and providers of goods and services brought about many changes in how products are priced, labeled, regulated, and delivered. In 1972 Mrs. Nelson articulated her philosophy in a speech to students at Kansas State University. "A model economy is one in which the buyer and seller are on equal footing," she said, "equally informed, equally powerful. They negotiate with the same amount of information, the same degree of strength in relation to each other. If we're going to work towards that model as consumers, we're going to have to organize. One consumer with one housing problem or one unwanted encyclopedia or one lemon car against organized industry--and it is organized in every instance--is not a peer relationship."

Chronology