About Sidney Shainwald

If every man is the architect of his character, then Sidney Shainwald was a master builder—a man of vast integrity, humor, intellect, charm and kindness—with a life-long commitment to social justice. Sidney was that rare individual—idealistic, conscientious, dedicated—a man of many accomplishments who not only conceived and discussed ideas and ideals but attempted throughout his life to see that those ideals became a reality.

Sidney Shainwald loved his wife, his children and grandchildren, his friends, art, music, travel, a good pun, and a perfectly rhymed poem. A passionate man driven by his convictions, he was at once gracious and clever, dignified, principled, and loyal.

While still a student at City College but already an impassioned advocate for social justice he went to work for Consumer’s Union in 1937 and spent almost fifty years there. Sidney Shainwald always viewed the organization as a vehicle that would promote economic justice and equality.

When he became one of the staff of ten, they worked in a total of 350 square feet of office space, sharing $100 in salaries, the publication had 148 subscribers. The problems were many, the future was little more than a hope. But the Board and staff were comprised of idealists and iconoclasts who shared Sidney’s lifelong commitment to what we know today as consumerism. In 1939, he wrote his thesis entitled Consumer Product Testing Organizations; A Comparative Analysis. By that time, Consumers Union Reports—as it was then known—had acquired 4,000 subscribers.

After passing his CPA exam, and serving in the South Pacific during World War II, Mr. Shainwald became a partner in a public accounting firm, but retained Consumers Union as a (frequently non-paying) client. Deeply committed to the arts, he represented some of the greatest artists and entertainers of the 20th century, including Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipschitz, Maum Gabo, George Grosz, Peggy Guggenheim, Mike Todd, Zero Mostel, David Merrick, Albert and Mary Lasker, Dinah Shore, Eddie Albert, London Film Productions, and Magnum Photos. He also was the accountant for, and an astute investor in, numerous Broadway shows and movies, including Around the World in Eighty Days, which he liked to say paid for his family’s house. Yet he missed the public service orientation of CU and—when asked to work exclusively for the organization returned to full time work there in 1960 at a substantial reduction in pay.

Shainwald was an ex-officio member of the Consumers Union Board of Directors, their liaison with the Consumer Association of Canada, a representative to the Consumers Federation of America, and to the International Union of Consumers Unions. During his tenure, CU established three advocacy offices, became involved in the environmental movement, and launched Penny Power, a magazine for children, and continued to expand its interest and expend its considerable resources on vital economic, social and health issues.

Mr. Shainwald said it best: “Consumers Union was never just a job; it always was and always will be a way of life with me. As far back as my college days, I was interested in Consumers Union not only as an organization for which I worked, but as the major force in the consumer movement. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to serve CU… and would like to think that I have made some contribution to its growth, direction, and policies.”

Social benefit was the desired result; CU was the mechanism through which it could be achieved. Consumerism today is a household word, and Consumers Union, which has been termed a unique social invention, is now inextricably woven into the fabric of society. Seventy years after its founding, Consumers Union is the only social reform organization born in the Great Depression to have survived. By the time Sidney Shainwald retired, the American prototype had been copied in over forty-six countries.

Even after his retirement, Mr. Shainwald continued his work on behalf of consumers, at one point testifying as an expert witness in cases where the Red Cross had given people contaminated blood that there had been ample funds to test the blood. “This is a very rich organization,” he wrote in a report commissioned by Money magazine. “If it were a public company, I’d love to own stock in it.”

Sidney paid a tribute to the founding president of CU, with whom he had worked for more than forty years. He wrote “If Consumer Reports were to make a product evaluation of Colston Warne, it might read something like this: ‘A unique model, a once-in-a-lifetime production, exceedingly efficient . . . Definitely top-rated and the best buy ever’.” The same can be said for Sidney Shainwald.