LABOR: All the Wonderful Things

It was hot as the insides of a steam boiler in Chicago’s Northwestern Station; the noise was terrific. A band was playing and some of the fellows and their wives were singing The Old Grey Mare and some more were singing Hail! Hail! The Gang’s All Here. Lean Jim Dowling bent over his tiny wife and yelled at her: “I’m not kidding. I’m just about sick with excitement. Think of all the wonderful things we’re going to see.”

Jim hit it right: it was going to be some party. The good old Chicago Teamsters’ Joint Council had gotten two special trains, all Pullman and air-conditioned, to send its 188 delegates to the Teamsters’ convention in San Francisco. Each train had a special bar car—a freight car, fixed up inside with bright paint and a sort of juke box. In one car alone there were 352 cases of Blatz beer, about $25 worth of pretzels and popcorn and potato chips, cases and cases of coke and soda.

No other union in the world had ever tossed a party quite like it. Every one of the delegates had at least $500 expense money in his pocket besides the railroad and meal tickets and all; it had cost the Chicago locals about $800 for each delegate.

29 Empties. Dave Sark, Local 726’s president, was running the show and he knew how to keep it jumping with fun and sightseeing. There was a stop at Colorado Springs and another for a look at the Royal Gorge and there was a bus trip into the mountains in Utah and swimming in the Great Salt Lake (“you float in that water”). Out of Salt Lake City, Sam Conino got a telegram; his wife had her baby O.K. The boys of Sam’s local were all traveling without their wives and itching for a real party, and that set it off. When it was over, there were 29 empty whiskey bottles in that bar car.

The next day it was Boulder Dam (nobody called it Hoover Dam) and that night it was the high spots in Las Vegas. Jake Goeltz nicked the dollar slot machines for two jackpots. He walked out of there with $308. Then in Hollywood there was a tour out to see the movie stars’ homes, and a big free-drink party by the Los Angeles Teamsters’ Joint Council, and a nightclub jaunt to Earl Carroll’s place, and the Biltmore Bowl. Some of the boys had to borrow coats and ties from the waiters before they’d let them in to have a look at the goings-on in Earl Carroll’s.

Nothing but the Best. Then came San Francisco, and it was still nothing but the best. There were 1,700 delegates from all over the country, and they had the best rooms in the best hotels. And the convention hall was really something. Back of the stage was a curtain and it showed International President Dan Tobin as he was back in 1894 in Boston, driving a team hitched to a butcher’s wagon. He had a long handlebar mustache and he was wearing a tall iron hat. It looked funny when Old Dan stood in front of it. He’s pushing 71 or 72 now—never will tell anybody exactly how old he is—but he was pink as a baby and he looked strong and deep-chested as any man around. The boys got a kick out of old Uncle Dan’s stories about how tough it was in the old days—before he started on his 41-year career as president and czar of the teamsters. Dan told about his first convention when he and the union’s president had to sleep in the same bed in a cheap hotel room. It cost $2.50 a week. “Now,” said Dan, “if you give a bell boy less than that for bringing you a newspaper, he spits in your eye.”

Dan was very serious about the Taft-Hartley Act. It’s never going to work, he said, but he told the boys to use caution; it isn’t going to be any holiday for any union man until labor can get it trimmed down. Dan said a labor man will have to be a Houdini to stay out of trouble and out of prison. Bill Green was there to make a speech, and why shouldn’t he be? The Teamsters have more than 900,000 members, and that’s the biggest outfit in Bill Green’s A.F.L. Bill Green was fighting mad. He ripped Senator Taft up & down and dared the Republicans to nominate him for President. Bill Green came right out and predicted that for every labor vote Taft would get there’d be at least 100,000 labor votes cast against him.

How About Some Salmon? Dan Tobin ran the convention, of course, but he didn’t get his way on everything. He wanted the delegates to boost the International’s tax on the membership from 30¢ to 50¢ a month, so that the treasury could be built up from $17 million to $50 million to fight the Taft-Hartley Act. The boys wouldn’t stand for that and Dan didn’t press the point. The boys did beg Old Dan to let them raise his $30,000 salary. Dan practically had tears in his eyes about that and he threatened to resign if they did.

Of course, the boys re-elected Uncle Dan for another five years, and they gave him a change in the constitution so that he could appoint an executive vice president. They figured that that is Dan’s way of getting the West Coast’s roughneck Dave Beck, who is only sixth vice president, up in a spot where Dan can hand the presidency to him whenever he wants to. Dave swore up & down that there wasn’t any deal for him to get the new job. Dan never said who was in his mind, but everybody was sure it was Dave. After the constitution change, the convention was over in a hurry, but there was no letdown in the high times for Jim Dowling and the Chicago crowd. Dave Beck had both trainloads as his guests in Seattle to catch some good Puget Sound salmon. And this week there’ll be Yellowstone National Park and a lot of other sightseeing places on the way back to Chicago. It sure is wonderful, all the Chicago boys agreed, what a good union can do for you.