Patrick L. Quinlan

Arthur Patrick L. "Pat" Quinlan (1883–1948) was an Irish trade union organizer, journalist, and socialist political activist. Quinlan is best remembered for the part he played as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1913 Paterson silk strike — an event which led to his imprisonment for two years in the New Jersey State Penitentiary.

Biography

Early years

Arthur Patrick L. Quinlan — known to history as Patrick and to his friends as "Pat" — was born February 23, 1883, in the town of Kilmallock in the southern part of County Limerick, Ireland. He was the son of a farmer and dry goods merchant who emigrated to the United States of America with his family in 1887.

At the end of 1900, Quinlan returned to the US. Quinlan was also part of the effort at this time by the New Jersey SLP to broker organizational unity with the rival Socialist Party of America (SPA). Along with IWW organizers Carlo Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Quinlan was slated to address the 2,000 or so workers who managed to make their way to this event. Despite the peaceful nature of the strike meeting, Quinlan, Flynn, and Tresca were consequently charged with inciting a riot and held on $1,000 bail. Formal charges against Quinlan included inciting personal injury, inciting assault, and advocating burning and destruction. On May 7, 1913, Quinlan's trial began, with a large crowd assembling outside the Passaic County Courthouse in Paterson to cheer Quinlan and other IWW leaders and boo the police "in a manner not unlike a sports event." Jury selection occupied the morning and the trial commenced in an afternoon session. Seven witnesses, headed by a police detective sergeant, gave testimony that Quinlan had told the assembled strikers at Turn Hall to leave their jobs "by any means necessary." The mistrial did not result in Quinlan's freedom, however, and just two days after the conclusion of the first trial a second trial against Quinlan was begun.

On Thursday, July 3, 1913, with cases against the other IWW defendants at last concluded, Quinlan went before Judge Abram Klenert for sentencing. Klenert sentenced Quinlan to 2 to 7 years in Trenton State Prison and fined him $500 on the basis of his conviction. The strike's loss effectively ended a period of close cooperation between the Wobblies and the Socialist Party and upon reaching that fork in the road, Quinlan chose to chart his course with the latter. a gathering in St. Louis which established the party's opposition to American participation in World War I, and to the 1919 Emergency National Convention which saw the formal split of the party into Socialist and Communist wings.

Quinlan was also a member of the International Longshoremen's Association from 1917 to 1919.

Quinlan returned to America in 1921, moving to Buffalo, New York, to assume the editorship of the Socialist Party newspaper there, The New Age.

Later years

By 1941, Quinlan had become editor of the Gaelic American, a weekly publication associated with the Sinn Féin. In this capacity Quinlan was supportive of the activities of the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, a mass organization of the American Communist Party.

Death and legacy

Patrick Quinlan died in 1948.

Footnotes

Works "The Paterson Strike," Solidarity [New Castle, PA], vol. 4, no. 12, whole no. 168 (March 15, 1913), pg. 1. "The Paterson Strike and After," The New Review [New York], vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1914), pp. 26–33. "Statements of Patrick L. Quinlan on the Fate of the IWW (1917)." Published in Percy Stickney Grant, Fair Play for the Workers: Some Sides of their Maladjustment and the Causes. New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1918; pp. 280–284. "Zukor, Communist Traitor of Brooklyn Dissected: His Charges Refuted," The New Age [Buffalo], vol. 10, whole no. 474 (Sept. 29, 1921), pg. 6. "Irish-English Peace: The Free State Analysed," The New Age [Buffalo], vol. 10, whole no. 486 (Dec. 15, 1921), pg. 1. "James Connolly: Irish Republican Leader and International Socialist," The New Age [Buffalo, NY], vol. 10, whole no. 492 (Jan. 26, 1922), pg. 7.