Colston Estey Warne was a professor of economics and one of the founders of Consumers Union

Consumers Union

Consumers Union is a non-profit organization best known as the publisher of Consumer Reports, based in the United States. Its mission is to "test products, inform the public, and protect consumers."...

 (along with Arthur Kallet

Arthur Kallet

Arthur Kallet was a leading consumer advocate.An engineer, Kallet co-authored a 1933 book entitled 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics with fellow engineer Frederick Schlink.In 1936 he left as director of Consumers Research after its head F.J...

), in 1936. He served as president of the board of directors from 1936 to 1979.

A native of Romulus, New York

Romulus, New York

Romulus is a town in Seneca County, New York, United States. The population was 2,036 at the 2000 census. The town is named after the mythical founder of Rome, Romulus, a name assigned by a clerk with an interest in the classics...

, he graduated from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 in 1921 with a master's degrees in economics, later earning his doctorate in political economy from the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh

University of Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...

 and later became professor of economics at Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

 from 1926 until his retirement in 1959. He testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, when it investigated charges of Communism in the consumer movement.

At Amherst, his courses on labor history were highly popular during the 1930s. After World War II, he participated in the required sophomore American Studies course, where he edited several of the "Problems in American Civilization" anthologies produced in that course and widely imitated. After his retirement, under President John William Ward, Amherst awarded him an honorary doctorate.

He is an Ordo Honoris brother of the Kappa Delta Rho

Kappa Delta Rho

Kappa Delta Rho is an American college social fraternity, with 77 chapters spread out over the United States, primarily in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions...

fraternity, having initiated into the Beta chapter at Cornell University.