AMFA supporters are not the only ones that have called TWU: "Commies!"
RED was a familar term in the 30's and 40's for commie, and quill is the founder of TWU!
These two books are at the central library in Tulsa!
“Unaware of the Faustian nature of his remarks, he often said, “Sure I worked with the Communists. In 1933 I would have make a pact with the Devil himself if he could have given us the money, the mimeograph machines and the manpower to launch the Transport Workers Union.†Page 63; Mike Quill Himself, By Shirley Quill
“The leadership of the Communist Party also recognized that Mike was the key to the union’s organization drive. …They had found each other at exactly the right moment in history.†Page 68; Mike Quill Himself, By Shirley Quill
“I once asked two early members of TWU why they accepted Mike’s ties with the Communists. “It’s simple. We trusted Mike Quill,†they answered. Page 68; Mike Quill Himself, By Shirley Quill
“The story of the successful seizure of the Kent Avenue power plant, which launched the Transport Workers Union, is well known among union historians. What is not known is that before the emergency session with the powerhouse workers, Mike, Hogan, MacMahon and Santo had met with the top officials of the trade union department of the Communist Party. These men and women were appalled by the plan to stage a sit-in strike and attempted to forbid it. “ Page 89; Mike Quill Himself, By Shirley Quill
“The majority of TWU’s International Board were members of the Communist Party. They controlled the union’s finances and its legal, publicity, clerical and organizaing staff. The canard had persisted for years that Mike was just a figurehead. He was the clown, the political baboon; the Party was the brains of TWU.†Page 201; Mike Quill Himself, By Shirley Quill
“The six ruddy Irishmen had been told to change their names during the time they spent in the cafeteria and to use passwords when discussing the meeting in other public places. They turned to listen to the seventh man, a slim, dark-eyed, dark-complexioned Hungarian, a stranger to the tunnels, He coolly informed them that they were to be the founders and leaders of a new, powerful Transport Workers Union. He added, calmly, that they were going to control everything on wheels with the support and direction of the Communist Party, U.S.A., which , in turn, took its orders from Moscow.†Page 16; The man who ran the subways, By L.H. Whittemore
“The Transport Workers Union sought this objective as an “industrial†union rather than as a “craft†organization. It would carry the full weight of all the workers, not just those specializing in any one craft, or skill. In this way, TWU could authorize a strike of all the employees, no just of some of them, and would be not only a representative of the workers, but an effective power when dealing with management, The strength in unity and numbers sought by the Communist Party coincided perfectly with that sought by a good trade union.†Page 25; The man who ran the subways, By L.H. Whittemore
“The unionization of New York City’s transit workers in this fashion, under the banner of TWU, would be an achievement on major historic importance to organized labor. At the same time, it was John Santo’s method of going under cover in the transit drive-by using the Transport Workers Union as the sole vehicle for recruiting new Communist Party members.†Page 26; The man who ran the subways, By L.H. Whittemore
“The convention went smoothly except for one small disruption when an astute delegate rose from the floor and offered a resolution against communism. The board had just passed two such denunciations of fascism, and the delegate wanted to include communism “or any other ‘ism’ except Americanism.†The board’s faces changed color. The officers spoke for three hours against the resolution. MacMahon claimed it would start a witch hunt in the TWU. Finally, it was removed from the order of business and forgotten.†Page 61; The man who ran the subways, By L.H. Whittemore
“Pehaps the biggest conflict within Quill was his preachment of communism under the guise of Connolly socialism, which did not sit well with his antisocialistic Irishmen.†Page 94; The man who ran the subways, By L.H. Whittemore
“The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union officials to take an oath that they were not Communists, but the government was not going to wait for John Santo to speak up. To its original 1941 charge that Santo had entered the country illegally, the government now added the charge that he advocated the forcible overthrow of the United States government.†Page 129; The man who ran the subways, By L.H. Whittemore
“Mike provided the show, subbed “Quill’s biennial circusâ€; he had been threatening citywide transit strikes since 1934 but had never called one. “reasonable people,†he said, “reach reasonable settlements. We don’t strike for the sake of striking. We are a responsible union.†Page 310, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“There was one fly in the ointment-Tom O’Shea. The boys decided to dump him because of his contentious tongue and capricious behavior. At a hastily called Delegates Council meeting Mike Quill was elected president, and Austin Hogan general secretary. That meeting was not a showpiece of democratic procedure, but Mike did not object to the shortcut that gave him the presidency of the Transport Workers Union.†Page83, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“Mike soon realized the club was part of a well-organized bootlegging operation and served as one of its many warehouses. The Quill had a wonderful time; smuggling booze during Prohibition was almost as much fun as smuggling arms for the IRA.†Page 44, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“Mike frequently remarked that he must have been born hating landlords, owners of enormous tracts of good Irish earth, symbols of British oppression. In a heady act of defiance, Mike had helped in his IRA days to put the match to many stately mansions of the absentee alien aristocracy that owned too much and did too little for the poor Irish farmers.†Page 59, Mike Quill himself; by Shirley Quill
“The leadership of the Communist Party also recognized that Mike was the key to the union’s organization drive. A remarkable alchemy united Irish Catholic nationalist rebels and American Communist in the struggle against a common enemy-exploitation of working people by the corporate trusts in depressed America. They had found each other at exactly the right moment in history.†Page 68, Mike Quill himself; by Shirley Quill
“I once asked two early members of TWU why they accepted Mike’s ties with the Communists. “It’s simple. We trusted Mike Quill,†they answered.†Page 68, Mike Qull himself; by Shirley Quill
“One of the founding members of TWU recalled a conversation with Mike when the union was still a secret organization with a handful of members. The then youthful subway worker was tired and discouraged. “it’s no use, Mike. How can we organize thirty-five thousand workers? We’ve been trying for months, and we’ve got only a hundred and thirty members.†“look what Jesus Christ did with twelve,†Mike countered. “But Mike, we’re trying to build a union, not a new religion.†“’Tis the same thing,†Mike replied.†Page 85, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“The delegates were obviously uninhibited, their remarks peppered with Irish wit and whimsy. The gavel-wielding Mike pulled some gaffes that would shock the serious student of parliamentary procedure to the marrow. I later asked him how he had learned to chair a convention with such professionalism.. He grinned. “I didn’t know Mr. Robers of the sky over him,: he admitted. “I picked up a few pointers watching the president of the City Council and Jogn L. Lewis, who was a master of the gavel.†Mike freely acknowledged that he was governed by his own ideas of what was right and/or expedient. “If someone quoted Roberts’ Rules of Order and it make sense, I would rule on the motion based on what I had heard, but if I didn’t understand it or didn’t like it, I would pretend I didn’t hear the speaker and just keep going.†Anything and everything went at that convention.†Page 109, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“Mike, paraphrasing Lenin, called the taxi drivers “the limping proletariat.†Page 114, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“A year later, when TWU was battling the Fifth Avenue Coach Company in the first New York City bus strike since the union was organized, the Dies Committee released its apocalyptic findings: that the TWU, headed by Michael J. Quill, was on of the CIO-affiliated unions under Communist leadership. The findings were “documented†by excerpts from the testimony of four subway workers who alleged they had been members of the Communist Party with Quill et al. The committee also relied heavily on Daily Worker reports of meetings, demonstrations, rallies and picket lines in which Michael J. had participated.†Page 126, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“Within the union, tensions had been mounting between Mike and the Communists on many issues. When the twenty-four-cent wage increase was announced, the comrades went berserk. They had not been consulted. Everyone in the city who was involved in labor negotiations knew that a thirty-cent increase was impossible: Quill had pulled the rabbit out of the hat by winning twenty-four cent.†Page 187, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“After William Z. Foster seized control of the Communist Party following World War II, visits by its national officers to Transport Hall became more frequent and discussions more acrimonious as Mike found himself in daily disagreement with the Party stalwarts and the Party line. Mike told me he was convince Foster wasn’t quite right in the head.†Page 194, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“Ultimately a motormen’s division was established within the New York local, and it became one of the pillars of TWU. But this was a strike against TWU’s industrial union structure, the dissidents demanding a separate union solely for their craft. Mike took over.†Page 265, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“It was a bewildering time for Mike and his friends. The Communist Party was giving the fledgling union money, manpower, mimeograph machines, ideas; his church was on the side of the exploiters.†Page 302, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
“The placid inarticulate rank and filers could be easily convinced by Mike that they had a great victory when they had achieved only pennies-as in past no-strike years.†Page 312, Mike Quill, himself; by Shirley Quill
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