Today, more than forty years after business took up Powell’s appeal, its success in achieving the goals he laid out makes it hard to fathom the depth of his concern. But the early 1970s were a high point for several public-interest movements that personified and amplified a growing opposition to business dominance. In addition, the recent victories of the civil rights and antiwar movements, coupled with the emergence of the women’s and environmental movements, meant change was in the air. Millions of Americans had shown their willingness to protest, demonstrate, and oppose corporate consumerism, so corporate leaders were understandably worried about their future.
These fears were amplified by legislative action. Between 1960 and 1980, under three Democratic and two Republican presidents, Congress passed an astonishing forty-nine laws that gave consumers, workers, and the environment new protection. These new laws, and the agencies that implemented them, governed the practices of the auto, alcohol, firearms, food, pharmaceutical, and tobacco industries, discussed previously, as well as every other industry in America. While each law had limitations, and many were inadequately enforced, together they constituted a sea change in government and corporate relations and signaled the willingness of both Republicans and Democrats to expand the rights and protections of consumers. After 1980, new regulations were of course still promulgated, but at a much slower pace, and many of the new laws limited or rolled back those passed in the previous two decades.
New organizations, such as Common Cause and Friends of the Earth, emerged to bring middle-class opposition to harmful business practices to Washington. Ralph Nader, Powell’s nemesis, founded a myriad of groups, including the Center for Auto Safety, the Corporate Accountability Project, the Center for Responsive Law, and the Public Citizen Litigation Group—all to create what Mark Green, a Nader protégé, called “a government in exile” that “waged a crusade against official malfeasance, consumer fraud and environmental degradation.” Nader’s 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, an exposé of the auto industry, and Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring, a critique of pesticide use, alerted millions of Americans to the harmful health consequences of certain corporate practices.