LABOR: The Herdsman

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As 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.

But 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.

He spent a good deal of his time holed up in his room, alone, reading Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s The Age of Jackson. Despite the convivial atmosphere of the convention, he sternly denied himself lunches (he struggles religiously to keep his weight at 185 lbs.—at one time he did daily roadwork to reduce). He turned down all invitations to visit bars, nightclubs or gambling joints (at 54, he has yet to touch either alcohol or tobacco).

He did no visible wirepulling, showed no interest in kingmaking, and—except for visits with aging, trigger-tempered Teamster Chief Dan Tobin—he steered clear of smoke-filled rooms. With beet-faced vehemence, he denied a rumor which had gotten to Cincinnati before him—that he was hell bent to boot old Dan out of office and grab the teamsters' presidency for himself. "Mr. Tobin," he said, with dignity, "is like a father to me."

The 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.

In many ways he seemed like a throwback to the lumber barons, the cattle kings and the mining magnates who had ruled the West before him. Like them, he had seen the West as a vast, unfenced, unclaimed territory where a strong man could take what he wanted. Beck had wanted its roaming herds of labor. He rounded them up, hogtied them, and branded them by the thousands. He fought off Rustler Harry Bridges with one hand while piously rustling the herds of lesser unions with the other.