You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday March 22, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: Pat Quinlan Is Returned to Prison in New Jersey
Pat Quinlan, organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World and a leader, two years ago, of the Paterson Silk Strike, was returned to the penitentiary in New Jersey earlier this month after the state supreme court refused to grant him a new trial. We turn to the Appeal to Reason for our coverage of the story of a class war prisoner, railroaded to prison for defying the Silk Barons of Paterson whose interests the courts continue to uphold.
From the Appeal to Reason of March 13, 1915:
"Down With Capitalism!" Is Pat Quinlan's Defy to
Silk Barons Who Railroaded Him to Prison
Pat Quinlan, Carlo Tresca, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Adolph Lessig, and Big Bill Haywood
at Paterson, New Jersey, during 1913 strike.
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Here is a letter from Pat Quinlan to the APPEAL and our reply sent by wire. These Two communications tell the entire story:
Paterson Jail, Paterson, N. J., March 1, 1915
Editor Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kan,:
Just a word or two to you and all the Appeal staff, to say that despite our final defeat I have all the confidence in the world in you and the staff. I know the Appeal did the best it could under the circumstances and that it worked without hope of gain or reward except to advance the cause of political and industrial freedom. Personally, I cannot tell you how deeply I appreciate your work and the financial loss the paper sustained in my behalf. I only hope the comrades of the Appeal Army will keep on their good work of boosting the Appeal, sending its brilliant rays into the dark and dreary places of the country to the end that capitalism will be abolished.
A long letter is impossible at this time, but I cannot close without thanking the Appeal readers for the moral and financial support accorded me throughout the fight. Some day I may be able to do my share for them and the cause and aid in bringing it to a glorious victory. Best wishes to you and the entire Appeal staff and hope it will not be many months before I grasp your loyal hands.
Fraternally, PAT QUINLAN
(By telegraph.)
Girard, Kan., March 3, 1915
Pat Quinlan, Paterson Jail, Paterson, N. J.:
Cheer up! The Appeal Army will never rest so long as you are in prison. We will agitate, petition and protest until the authorities shall give you freedom. We never shall forget that you are a martyr to our common cause nor will our enemies forget that an injury to you is the concern of us all.
APPEAL TO REASON.
`
From Current Opinion of August 1913
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After a long and bitter fight ably conducted by Henry Carless, the Socialist lawyer of Newark, N. J., and of late also by George Gordon Battle of New York City, the silk barons of Paterson have triumphed. Pat Quinlan was denied a new trial and must go back to prison. His sentence is two to seven years in the penitentiary. However, at the first opportune moment which will be determined by our comrades in the east the APPEAL will organize a campaign to petition the governor of New Jersey for a pardon for Pat Quinlan. A capitalist court has decreed that Pat Quinlan must pay the penalty for having stood loyally by the striking silk workers. Other capitalist courts have sustained this judicial out rage. There is no justice in courts owned, controlled and dominated by capitalism. The higher court of the people will hereafter consider Pat Quinlan's case.
The APPEAL interested itself in comrade Quinlan's case nearly two years ago. It was while Pat Quinlan was in the penitentiary, beginning his sentence, that the APPEAL came forward with $5,000 cash bail so that he might enjoy his liberty while his case was being appealed to the higher courts. The APPEAL also paid all the legal expenses while Comrade Carless kindly donated his services. Comrade George H. Goebel and other Socialists of New Jersey have given the APPEAL and Comrade Quinlan a great deal of help in this case, donating both their time and money. The APPEAL Army as a whole joined in this tremendous effort to get justice for a despised victim of capitalism. Unfortunately the case has ended disastrously. The testimony of the 14 hired policemen was considered as "important" by the capitalist courts. Each one of these 14 swore that Comrade Quinlan made the incendiary speech he was charged with. The fact that he was absent from that meeting which was supported by a number of witnesses, did not count.
Only one judge decided in favor of justice and against class interest. This judge-Justice Minturn of the supreme court-frankly stated that Pat Quinlan was convicted of "the social sin of entertaining an ostracized economic faith which labored for the abolition of the present wage system." Justice Minturn hit the nail on the head. Quinlan is in prison today because he stood for the same things that every Socialist the world over stands for. He was against the wage system. And that is the worst crime in the eyes of the retainers and henchmen of capitalism.
[Photographs added.]
From the Appeal to Reason of March 20, 1915:
With Bars They Blind the Goodly Sun
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A Visit to the New Jersey Bastile Where Pat Quinlan,
the Socialist Agitator, Is Paying the Price
For His Loyalty to Labor.
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BY MAURICE KORSHET
Pat Quinlan, Class War Prisoner
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On the same day-March 4th-that Meyer London was admitted to the United States congress, Pat Quinlan, handcuffed to a desperate criminal, was railroaded to the New Jersey state penitentiary to serve a sentence of two to seven years at hard labor. Meyer London is the second Socialist to take his seat in the United States congress and Pat Quinlan is the second labor leader to be incarcerated in the New Jersey bastile. The first man, McQueen, after serving several years, was pardoned in time to go home to die of tuberculosis.
Two days before Quinlan was removed to the penitentiary I obtained a special permit from Sheriff Radcliff to call upon him at the Passaic county jail in Paterson, facetiously known as Radcliff's Hotel. The person who christened the Paterson pest-house with this name had a peculiar sense of humor. Possibly the fact that it harbors unwilling gusts by day and night and teases their hunger with certain things dignified by the term "food" suggests the idea of a "hotel." But so far as hotel accommodations are concerned, a Bowery lodging and Hell kitchen is a little paradise compared to it. The place was built in the early '40-it looks it and smells it. Yet during the silk strike over one thousand men and women, some of them in their teens, were thrown into this place on trumped-up charges of "inciting to riot" and "unlawful assemblage"
Against the iron-barred door Pat pressed his genial, smiling face and spoke to me in his usual cheery, hopeful way. Not a word of bitterness or condemnation did he utter despite the fact that the workers whom he served so well left him to his fate without a word of protest. The least they could have done would have been to declare a strike of twenty-four hours the day he was jailed to show they had not forgotten him and as a protest against the injustice dealt him.
As I left that dismal place and speeded away in my car, wrapped in furs, warm and comfortable, inhaling deep gusts of the wintry air to replace the poisonous fumes of the "hotel" I could not efface from my mind the picture of Pat in his prison jumper and overalls peering through the closely-barred window of that fetid hole at the merry crowds passing to and fro in the bright sunlight.
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun;
And they do well to hide their hell.
For in it things are done
That of God nor Son of Man
Ever should look upon!
And there constantly recurred the bitter reflection: What's the use? Is it worth while sacrificing one's self for the workers when they themselves do not care? Here was Pat Quinlan in a felon's cell while the workers for whom he threw away his liberty were slaving away at their old tasks under the old conditions as contentedly as ever; nay, worse, even voting for the gang that put Pat behind the bars.
Pat, during the turbulent days of the strike worked enthusiastically night and day for the success of the workers; who often went without food and shelter for their sake and never asked for pay while the other "leaders" came for a few hours to make a speech and rushed back to New York with their pay envelope always in their pockets; who with his courage and inimitable Irish wit cheered the workers on during the dark days of the bitter six-months' struggle and became their idol-Pat was now caged in a dungeon with none but a few personal friends to grieve for him. Oh! the hollow, sickening mockery of it all!
Never has there been a grosser miscarriage of justice than in the case of Pat Quinlan. Officially, his crime is "inciting to riot." Ten policemen, tried and true, swore that Quinlan made a speech in Turn hall, Paterson, urging the workers to go tho the Doherty mill, where the strike began, drag out the scabs, beat them up and do anything to keep them from working. Twenty-six reputable men and women swore that Quinlan did not make this speech and that he was not even in the hall when the supposed incendiary speech was made. Quinlan came into the hall just as the meeting was in a turmoil. As he was about to mount the platform he was stopped by an officer who asked him who he was and what business he had in Paterson.
Pat told the officer it was none of his business. For this piece of "sass" he was arrested and the charge of "inciting to riot" placed to his account. Recently, an Italian named Manger, who was chairman of the shop committee of the Doherty mill, made an affidavit stating that Quinlan did not make the speech attributed to him, but, on the contrary, he (Manger) translated into imperfect English a speech which he (Manger) made in Italian urging the workers to get the scabs out of the mill-virtually a confession that he was the guilty man. The affidavit was ruled out by the court.
Pat Quinlan is an innocent man. He is serving a sentence of two to seven years at hard labor for a crime he never committed. In his case justice was not only blind as a bat but mad as a hornet. The strike was lasting too long to suit the bosses. No amount of police persecution and thuggery could shake the spirit of the workers. When the police closed all the halls in Paterson and jailed workers who gathered on the streets under the head of "unlawful assemblage," they promptly marched to Haledon, a nearby suburb, which being under a Socialist administration, welcomed them gladly, and there held rousing meetings.
From Current Opinion of August 1913
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Quinlan was the only leader who urged the workers to unite on the political field as well as the economic and, incidentally, he said a few things about the local authorities that got under their hides and stuck. Pat was an ardent Socialist as well as industrialist and his wit spared no one. Small wonder that justice was mad clean through and frothed at the mouth. Some one had to be the scapegoat. Some one must pay the penalty. Some one had to be used as a horrible example. Who was there better to rope in than this quick-witted Irishman who not only was a menace to the bosses but (unpardonable sin!) threatened the very jobs of the politicians by his insistence on political action by the workers? Instantly the wheels of justice were well greased and at high speed dumped Quinlan into the pen.
And the fears of the politicians were well grounded. For in the fall election for mayor of Paterson, Gordon Demerest, the Socialist candidate, came near being elected, polling over 5,000 votes, almost five times the normal Socialist vote. In the special spring election for congress, the democratic candidate, although backed by the administration at Washington, was swamped, a republican was elected and the Socialists still maintained their high vote.
But in the recent fall election the Socialist vote dropped to three thousand in the entire county, proving that the workers had forgotten all about the policemen's clubs and the jails and were willing to stick to the gang that wielded the club. Shortly after this election came the New Jersey supreme court decision denying Quinlan a new trial. Some one has said that court decisions follow election returns and this has led others to inquire what effect the election of a Socialist mayor in Paterson or a Socialist congressman in Passaic county would have had upon the Quinlan case.
Be this as it may, the fact remains that Quinlan is in jail. No doubt the authorities of Paterson feel quite satisfied in having him there. But it may be a case of the last laugh being the best. Quinlan in jail is more dangerous than out of it. The politicians may congratulate themselves that the workers have short memories and can easily be herded into the same old political camps. But there is no question that the injustice done Quinlan rankles in the hearts of the workers. As soon as they will fully realize the enormity of it all the reaction will set in.
Even conservative people will begin to ask whether Quinlan was not dealt with a little too harshly. Meanwhile the Socialists of Passaic county may use the Quinlan case as a campaign issue and keep the matter fresh in the minds of the voters. If the storm of indignation which the imprisonment of Pat Quinlan raises could be materialized into Socialist votes, such a political avalanche would be set into motion as to send the politicians scurrying for cover after the next election. And then Pat could sit contentedly in his cell and feel that the had not suffered in vain!
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[Photographs and paragraph breaks added.]
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Mar 13, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Mar 20, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
"Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Paterson Silk Strike"
-by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
IMAGES
IWW Organizers, Paterson, NJ, 1913
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Pat Quinlan from Current Opinion of Aug 1913
https://books.google.com/...
Patrick Quinlan
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Mass Meeting in Haledon from Current Opinion of Aug 1913
https://books.google.com/...
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There Is Power in a Union - Billy Bragg
The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a Union
-Billy Bragg
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