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Show fElTLpREEK QaLJ gSt By K. 8. There's one thing about television. tele-vision. You see the good and1 the bad, the stimulating and the depressing, de-pressing, the wholesome and the sordid. Perhaps one of the most tragicly disgusting series of events ever televised are currently being unfolded un-folded during .the Senate investigation investi-gation of the top brass of the Teamsters Union. To see intelligent intelli-gent men, who represent thousands of honest American workers, hum and haw, feign forgetfulness and take advantage of the Fifth Amendment is a sorry and discouraging discour-aging sight indeed. Whether Dave Beck, Frank Brewster, Jim Hoffa and others of the Teamster bigwigs are basically dishonest, is of ocurse, debatable, and will perhaps never be definitely definite-ly known. Certain it is that they have been playing fast and loose with other people's money. Unionism in this country is big business one of the biggest in fact. Huge sums of money collected collect-ed from the workers are involved and under present laws few financial finan-cial reports are required, few books audited or no public accounting made. Dues are deducted each month from the worker's wages and as far as he is concerned, that's that. This is not the first time that too much money and too much power has debased otherwise relatively rela-tively honest men. Setups like this have been getting head men into trouble since the dawn of history. It leads always to two things corruption of the leaders and oppression op-pression of those who pay. The purposes for which the Teamsters money was collected were good ones sick pay, rehabilitation, rehab-ilitation, death benefits and improvement im-provement of wages and working conditions were worthy causes. But non-interest loans, race horse stables, stab-les, plush apartments and lavish expense accounts could hardly be regarded as legitimate under the Union Constitution. Most loyal Teamsters would yell to high heaven at the thought that their Union was Communist dominated. dom-inated. To such members we might say that their leaders act considerably con-siderably like dictators, in the fact that they are responsible only on-ly to themselves. Whether Beck, Brewster, Hoffa and others will be found legally guilty and suitably punisheM is of small account. The whole Union movement is far bigger and more important that the whole kit and kaboodle. The next move is up to the Union members themselves, whether wheth-er Teamsters, Auto Workers, Steel Workers or others. All could do with a little housecleaning. Public investigation may be embarassing, but it lets in the sunshine and reveals re-veals the dirt, filth, rats and corruption. cor-ruption. Perhaps out of it all wall come stricter Union rules and government govern-ment regulations. Both are urgently urgent-ly needed. Those who stand in high places should be above reproach and their official acts revealed for all to see. The protection of the common man is the fundamental reason for which our democracy was established. So long 'til Thursday. |