Word: goon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sure let "Goon" Hoffa down easy in your Sept. 9 story. I suppose it was a case of "have trucks-will truckle...
Last January "Handsome Frank" Brewster, longtime king of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' fearsome West Coast goon squads, refused to answer the questions of the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee on the grounds that it was exceeding its authority. Cited for contempt of Congress, the Teamsters' Vice President Brewster, goon companion of Teamster Boss Dave Beck, claimed that he had purged himself by later appearing before the special McClellan committee and telling how he had used Teamsters' money to finance, among other things, his racing stables. Despite this plea, made before a federal judge in Washington, Handsome Frank...
...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 of skunk juice to use in stink bombs.) Described as a physical coward by those who have known him longest, Beck never suffered so much...
...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...
...Heaven. Over the years, the Teamsters' Boss Beck has labored mightily to achieve a standing of eminent respectability. Unlike his goon-squad lieutenants, he does not smoke, drink, play cards, shoot pool, follow the horses or bestow nylons indiscreetly. Beck and his Teamsters spend lavishly for civic and political purposes, e.g., a cool $1,000,000 pledged to the City of Hope Medical Center near Los Angeles, and (according to McClellan committee testimony) about $500,000 to defeat a right-to-work referendum in Washington State last year. With the notable exception of Washington's ex-Republican Governor...