Patrick L. Quinlan
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.
[2] During this time he formed a close political association with radical Irish socialist James Connolly — a key leader of the 1916 Easter Uprising who would be executed by the British government in the revolt's aftermath.
[4] Quinlan was regarded as an effective soapbox orator and formal public speaker, a person capable of winning audiences over with a sarcastic and intense delivery style.
[5] 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.
[6] The Paterson strike was long, costly, and bitter and the "outside agitators" of the IWW were particularly targeted by law enforcement authorities and mill owners looking to break the strikers.
[7] Quinlan was arraigned along with Big Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, and Adolph Lessig on Wednesday, April 30.
[10] 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.
"[10] County Prosecutor Michael Dunn, on the other hand, likened Quinlan to the McNamara Brothers, convicted of a fatal bombing in connection with a Los Angeles iron workers' strike.
[13] Upon his release, Quinlan's complaints about the dire conditions associated with the state's penitentiary system were instrumental in causing an investigative commission to be established.
[1] The defeat of the 1913 Paterson strike moved Quinlan back into the camp believing in the necessity of political action, bringing him into conflict with leaders of the IWW.
[14] 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.
[1] Among the new features appearing in the paper after Quinlan's assumption of the editorship around the first of October 1921 was a recurring editorial page section containing brief, pithy, politically charged barbs, entitled "Small Shot, by Patsy O'Bang.
