B. Olson. Although Local 574 won a contract recognizing the union and which broke the back of the anti-union Citizens Alliance in Minneapolis, Tobin expelled Local 574 from the Teamsters. Member outrage was extensive, and in August 1936 he was forced to recharter the local as 544. Within a year the newly formed Local 544 had organized 250,000 truckers in the Midwest and formed the Central Conference of Teamsters. Extensive organizing also occurred in the West. Harry Bridges, radical leader of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), was leading "the march inland"—an attempt to organize warehouse workers away from shipping ports. Alarmed by Bridges' radical politics and worried that the ILWU would encroach on Teamster jurisdictions, Dave Beck formed a large regional organization (the Western Conference of Teamsters) to engage in fierce organizing battles and membership raids against the ILWU which led to the establishment of many new locals and the organization of tens of thousands of new members. But corruption became even more widespread in the Teamsters during the Tobin administration. By 1941, the union was considered the most corrupt in the United States, and the most abusive towards its own members. Tobin vigorously defended the union against such accusations, but also instituted many constitutional and organizational changes and practices which made it easier for union officials to engage in criminal offenses. World War II and the post-war period By the beginning of World War II, the Teamsters was one of the most powerful unions in the country, and Teamster leaders were influential in the corridors of power. Union membership had risen more than 390 percent between 1935 and 1941 to 530,000. In June 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed IBT President Daniel J. Tobin to be the official White House liaison to organized labor, and later that year chair of the Labor Division of the Democratic National Committee. In 1942, President Roosevelt appointed Tobin special representative to the United Kingdom and charged him with investigating the state of the labor movement there. Tobin was considered three times for Secretary of Labor, and twice refused the post—in 1943 and 1947. On September 23, 1944, Roosevelt gave his famous "Fala speech" while campaigning in the 1944 presidential election. Because of Roosevelt's strong relationship with Tobin and the union's large membership, the President delivered his speech before the Teamster convention. Nonetheless, Teamsters members were restive. Dissident members of the union