Word: becks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Dave Beck, the Teamster wagon has been a perfect vehicle for a ride to power. At its first convention in 1903, with Niagara Falls roaring in the background, the 50,000-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters selected as its first president a 295-lb. cutthroat named Cornelius Shea, who eventually was packed off to Sing Sing for stabbing his mistress 27 times (Shea bungled the job -the girl lived). Next, in 1907, came Irish-born Dan Tobin, who was to hold office for 45 astonishing years. Fond of boasting that he ran the union with only two staffers, Tobin came...
Attar of Skunk Juice. A significant share of the credit for the Teamsters' growth went to Dave Beck, the red-haired son of a hard-working carpet cleaner and a laundress, who entered the union's ranks by way of a job as a laundry driver, and became West Coast organizer. The jurisdictional labor wars of the 1930s were groin-kicking, skullcracking, stink-bombing affairs, and Dave Beck's West Coast goon squad was the toughest of the lot. (One of its oldtime mugs last week recalled paying a Northwest trapper $100 a quart for attar...
...Light for God. Beck was far more than a mere deployer of goon squads. Perhaps more than anyone else, he understood the immense power of the Teamsters in an industrial nation that transports its vital supplies on the wheels of some 10 million trucks. By refusing to deliver those supplies, the Teamsters could strangle business; by refusing to support other unions, the Teamsters could break strikes. Beck took the fullest advantage of his power. A genuine organizational genius, he looked south from his Seattle stronghold and saw how he could force his Teamsters on unorganized Los Angeles by threatening...
...came, in October 1952, when dim-eyed old Dan Tobin could no longer forestall Beck's rise to the throne. Tobin himself placed Beck in nomination for the Teamsters' presidency with a soaring declaration: "There is not the slightest stain on his character. His conscience, I am sure, shines brilliantly in the eyes...
...Under Beck, the Teamsters have increased their membership to 1,400,000 and their bankroll to more than $35 million. The union's 850 locals include brewery and dairy workers, cannery employees, nutmeat and potato-chip salesmen. "Dave," says another labor leader, "will take anybody he can get his hands on. A Teamster' to him is anybody who sleeps on a bed with movable casters...