Word: becking
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...befitted the most powerful labor leader in the West, Seattle's bald, pink-faced Dave Beck toiled assiduously last week to satisfy the demands of protocol at the A.F.L. convention. He arrived in Cincinnati for the big doings as punctiliously as a good Moslem entering Mecca. He donned a proper hand-painted necktie, submitted cheerfully to interviews, and loitered diplomatically in the lobby of the Netherland Plaza Hotel, glad-handing rheumy and belligerent old union patriarchs...
...when the convention proper began, Teamster Czar Beck acted less like a union big shot than a man taking a rest cure at some stodgy, back-country hot springs. He made no speeches at all; when he sat down to listen to convention oratory, he did so with the resigned air of a man lowering himself into a mud bath for the good of his soul and his sweat glands...
...Booster. Delegates and newsmen who had never seen Dave Beck before were a little startled, not only by his mild and self-effacing performance, but by his personal appearance. His quiet, expensive clothes, his full-toothed smile, his bland face, his high-pitched, almost boyish voice, gave him the aura of a super-Rotarian booster right out of Main Street. But his eyes-cold, blue and direct-explained him more fully...
They also explained his lack of interest in the machinations of the A.F.L.'s jealous, bumbling, convention-bound rulers. In the 22 years since he climbed down from a laundry truck to become an organizer for the teamsters, Dave Beck had never begged for crumbs at the table of the A.F.L. hierarchy. He had become a Big Man despite them, by virtue of his own ambition, ability and ruthlessness...
Those pioneers and leaders of the "Age of Enlightenment,"-Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Locke-put too much emphasis on reason, said Dr. Beck. The intellect, he added stoutly, is not enough. "We know from the history of our own times that the intellect has been a disappointment. It has not given men the central direction for which they searched...