Jimmy Hoffa, through the lending power of his Central States Pension Fund, had a huge impact on Las Vegas and casino history. I don’t think the definitive statement of that impact has been written yet.
That’s not at all a knock on this book: the author’s scope is Hoffa’s whole life, and the Teamster investments there (no matter how influential in that city) were only a small part of a much bigger picture. This is a great book and one that I’d recommend, both to the casual reader and to an academic audience.
Thaddeus Russell. Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the American Working Class. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. 272 pages, with photos, notes, and index.
Jimmy Hoffa remains one of the most vilified and enigmatic figures in 20th century American history. While he was very much a public figure during his tempestuous career as a Teamster leader, most speculation about Hoffa centered on his behind-the-scenes dealings, including his reported links to organized crime. Within the standard narrative of American labor history, in which the craft unionism of the American Federation of Labor is superseded by the industrial unionism of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s, Hoffa’s energetic union leadership, which largely eschewed ideology, is considered an aberration. The Teamsters, one of the largest and most powerful trade unions in American history, are thus left out of many interpretations of labor history.
In Out of the Jungle, Thaddeus Russell addresses Hoffa’s life and leadership by examining both the details of his life and career and the larger social and economic forces that shaped the world he lived in. But Russell does more than paint a more accurate picture of James Riddle Hoffa, Teamster President; he demonstrates that the outstanding reason for Hoffa’s popularity among the rank and file was his responsiveness to “the desire of his union’s members for material improvement in their lives and their willingness to act on that desire” (5-6). Instead of loafing around loading docks idly waiting to be duped by the scheming Hoffa (as others would have it), the Teamster rank-and-file, as interpreted by Russell, willingly chose Hoffa’s leadership and genuinely believed that he delivered higher wages to members. In other words, Hoffa became a union power because he was able to consistently make good on his promises to give his union members better lives.
Russell intricately traces the evolution of Hoffa into a labor leader, and how “an unregulated and amoral political economy” (6) produced such a field general for 20th century industrial America. From Hoffa’s beginnings with Detroit’s Local 299, he evinced a pugnacity-and ruthlessness-that would boost his ascension within the union hierarchy. This pugnacity with in consonance with the spirit of Hoffa’s constituents, a spirit that differed markedly from the corporatist social visions of leaders like Sidney Hillman and Walter Reuther, who sought to bring collective bargaining “out of the jungle and into civilization” (22). Russell asserts that the Detroit Teamsters (and later, Hoffa’s national Teamster constituency) eschewed the mutual sacrifices that “civilization” demanded, confident that Hoffa could successfully bring them better wages and working conditions through his “jungle unionism.”
So Hoffa’s rise to power, though undoubtedly spurred by his personal ambition, is easily understood as the end product of the social and economic forces that drove Teamsters away from the broad social agendas and visions of business/labor cooperation harbored by industrial unionists like Hillman and Reuther. Hoffa did not win the loyalty of his rank and file through manipulation and terror-rather, he was selected as champion of the union because he was a master of using manipulation and terror to better secure the union’s goals.
Hoffa’s career was dogged by questions of his association with organized crime, and his 1975 disappearance is widely believed to have been the result of a falling out with organized crime. The most crucial question of Hoffa and organized crime is when exactly the alliance began. Most scholarly and journalistic accounts accept that Hoffa, unable to dislodge the CIO from his Detroit Teamster fiefdom in 1941, made a “pact with the underworld,” in particular Detroit mobster Santo Perrone, that transformed him “from union reformer to labor racketeer” (88). Russell demonstrates that, while Hoffa’s organization made liberal use of “independent” criminals as organizers and enforcers, he didn’t initiate contract with Perrone until the late 1940s, and makes it clear that Hoffa’s dealings with organized crime-and his eventual end-were anything but inevitable, but rather the results of a series of decisions made by Hoffa throughout his career.
Out of the Jungle has the benefit of solid research that rests more on documentation than on uncorroborated statements from “former associates.” It therefore delivers and explanation of Hoffa’s career that is entirely convincing. Russell’s grounding in labor history allows him to connect Hoffa’s career to larger trends, something that is vital for a better appreciation of both the man and his times. Readers unfamiliar with labor history will be interested in the earliest chapters, which sketch the world from which Hoffa emerged, as they paint a compelling portrait of the “Depression City” into which Hoffa stepped as a young Teamster organizer. The following chapters may drag a bit, as Russell walks the reader through the jurisdictional and intra-union battles that Hoffa fought to consolidate his power (a bit repetitive, as Hoffa eliminates threat after threat). But these chapters hold the key to understanding Hoffa’s behavior later in his career and demonstrate, if nothing else, his consistency and resourcefulness.
For those interested in labor history or the life of Hoffa, Out of the Jungle is a mandatory read. It places Hoffa’s leadership into the context of a broader American labor history in ways that no other Hoffa work has to date. Combining primary resources with a solid understanding of the larger picture, Russell has crafted a book that, if it does not explode Hoffa’s mystique, certainly makes him much more understandable.
Originally reviewed July 2002.