Dammit, I may have faults, but being wrong ain't one of them.
— James Riddle Hoffa
Just how wrong he could be, the pugnacious, taciturn boss of the Teamsters Union learned last week when the iron gates of the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa., swung shut on him. Jimmy Hoffa was in on an eight-year sentence, and could be rapped with an additional five-year term if the courts reject his appeal from a conviction for fraud and conspiracy. Said he: "It's a very unhappy day in my life."
It was a day Jong in coming. Ever since taking over the 1.8 million-member union ten years ago—from Dave Beck, who was imprisoned for larceny—Hoffa, 54, has been the object of almost constant investigations and allegations by the Federal Government. Six times he was brought to trial but only twice convicted. Hoffa took modest refuge in an ancient businessman's gag: he festooned his desk with a bronze plaque inscribed with the dog-Latin motto: Illegitimi Non Carborundum (Don't let the bastards wear you down).
Perverse Sympathy. He never did. In fact, Hoffa's stubborn fight against imprisonment touched a perverse chord of sympathy among his union members. Casting himself in the role of Jean Valjean, Hoffa shouted: "To hell with all our enemies"—and his Teamsters loved it. He played to the hilt the fiction that he was the persecuted Everyman, the scapegoat of the Establishment.
He was no underdog when it came to running his union. Hoffa ruthlessly crushed opposition, demanded total obedience from his officers. His iron-fisted rule led him into questionable associations with gangsters, shady deals with employers and flagrant misuse of union funds. Bobby Kennedy, who as counsel for the Senate rackets committee and later as Attorney General showed that he could be as rough an infighter as Hoffa, called his handling of the union a "conspiracy of evil." So fierce was the enmity between Hoffa and Kennedy that special police guards were assigned to Bobby after Hoffa's imprisonment, as protection against reprisal from Hoffa's partisans.
Yet, in his fashion, Hoffa accomplished a great deal for the Teamsters. He molded the union, once a disparate collection of feuding regional fiefdoms, into the most powerful labor force in the nation. A formidable bargainer, he scrupulously kept to the letter of contracts once they were signed and swiftly stamped out wildcat strikes. By equalizing drivers' wages throughout the country, he eliminated labor costs as a factor in competition and thereby helped stabilize the trucking industry. He opened the union's doors to Negroes and, characteristically, disdained any praise as a civil rights advocate. It was only "bread-and-butter" common sense to encourage Negro members, he explained, because otherwise they would become strikebreakers. He recruited not only truckers for his union but every other worker he could muster, from aircraft workers to hatcheck girls. So large was his union that a nationwide Teamsters' strike could paralyze the U.S. economy, and Hoffa lost no chance to brag about such power.