ABSTRACT
All scavengers (partners as well as helpers) are members of Local 350, Sanitary Truck Drivers and Helpers, Teamsters International. For Lenny the shareholder's collection responsibility probably had not been as hard as it was for many scavengers. Meeting the public in that way must have been his metier, for even while he was "carrying the can," he was also employed as an insurance salesman—a job he had had to give up when he became president. According to Lenny, people generally felt that the scavengers made a lot of money because they had been in better shape than other working people during the Depression. The events that led to the scavengers' selecting Lenny in 1965 as their new broom would not have happened, or so it seemed, if the old president had not demanded a salary raise to $30,000.
