I will comment very briefly.
You are absolutely right. It was passed at a time when union corruption and union racketeering were of much greater concern in the U.S. than they are today, but even at that time, one of the chief architects of the law, a professor of law at Harvard University, Archibald Cox, actually warned against “excessively elaborate reports which place an undue burden upon the ordinary men and women who serve as officers of many local unions”.
One aim of the legislation is to give publicity to financial malpractice. There can be no better place to hide than under a mountain of thousands of lengthy reports filed in the cellars of the Department of Labor. The intention of this—