E.S. reader Adam emailed us this story today with the following hilarious (and spot-on) preface: “This is like the 12,000th article the New York Times has done with the general theme of ‘oh [crap], there’s supposedly a recession, we’re still rich but isn’t that gauche now?’ But this one’s actually interesting, as opposed to the other fluffies.”

Reading it over, he’s right on both counts. Particularly regarding this excerpt from the contribution by Lawrence Glickman, author of the forthcoming book Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America:

During the Depression decade, intellectuals and politicians put forward an “underconsumptionist” theory which held that government policy needed to promote mass consumption. Many activists also emphasized the economic responsibilities of consumers. Hence the slogan of the League of Women Shoppers, one of the important Depression era consumer organizations: “Use Your Buying Power for Justice.”

The 1930s also witnessed an upsurge in campaigns for consumer protection, most notably with the formation of Consumers Union in 1936. Americans debated both who they should reward with their consuming power and equally who they should punish. And these debates were not confined to the left side of the political spectrum. The xenophobic “Buy American” campaigns promoted by the Hearst media empire and others revealed that Americans, then and now, defined responsible consumption in a variety of ways.

That ethos — recognizing consumer power even as people buy less — is resurfacing now. It will be interesting to see how recent efforts to promote ethical consumption (in, for example, products that are made free from animal cruelty or environmentally sensitive production) will align with the widely recognized need for increased spending.

When people are shopping less, marketers pay extra attention to the goods that still attract consumers. That puts you, ethical shoppers, in the driver’s seat.