Among the five ringleaders arrested and
held for the grand jury were Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Patrick
Quinlan, whose trials attracted wide attention. Elizabeth Flynn,
an appealing young widow scarcely over twenty-one, testified that
she had begun her work as an organizer at the age of sixteen,
that she had not incited strikers to violence but had only
advised them to picket and to keep their hands in their pockets,
"so that detectives could not put stones in them as they had done
in other strikes." The jury disagreed and she was discharged.
Quinlan, an unusually attractive young man, also a professional
I.W.W. agitator, was found guilty of inciting to violence and was
sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. After serving nine
months he was freed because of a monster petition signed by some
20,000 sympathetic persons all over the United States. Clergymen,
philanthropists, and prominent public men, were among the
signers, as well as the jurors who convicted and the sheriff who
locked up the defendant.
These cases served to fix further public attention upon the
nature of the new movement and the sort of revivalists its
evangel of violence was producing. Employers steadfastly refused
to deal with the I.W.W., although they repeatedly asserted they
were willing to negotiate with their employees themselves. After
three months of strike and turmoil the mayor of Paterson had
said: "The fight which Paterson is making is the fight of the
nation.
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