(Excerpt from Ireland to-Day I could go on, as I had the ...)
Excerpt from Ireland to-Day I could go on, as I had the great privilege of doing before the Foreign Relations Committee in Washington. And recite function after function that this Government of Ireland is carrying om leading to the conclusion that it is the only Government existing in Ireland to-day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Francis Patrick "Frank" Walsh was born in St. Louis, Mo. He was the second son and third of six children of James and Sarah (Delany) Walsh, both American born of Irish descent. In 1867 the Walshes moved to Kansas City, Mo. , but the father, who was engaged in the coal and feed business, died when Frank was seven, and three years later the boy was forced to leave school to help support the family.
While working as a Western Union messenger, factory hand, and railway accountant, he learned shorthand at night, which enabled him to get a position as a court reporter. Meanwhile he studied law in the office of a local lawyer, Gardiner Lathrop.
He was admitted to the Missouri bar in 1889. Walsh quickly became an outstanding trial lawyer. His courtroom duels with James A. Reed, later United States Senator from Missouri, were famous in Kansas City. He also entered local politics, rising to importance as a member of that faction of the Democratic party, led by Joseph B. Shannon, which rivaled James Pendergast's Kansas City organization, and holding a succession of city offices, beginning with that of chief assistant corporation counsel (1892 - 94). But Walsh had a deep hatred of poverty and its causes, and his political career soon turned in the direction of reform. In 1901-02 he led a campaign against corrupt business influence within the Democratic state machine, a prelude to the surge of reform that in 1904 swept Joseph W. Folk into the Missouri governorship. During Folk's administration Walsh helped to push through the legislature a notable program of progressive legislation. In Kansas City, he served on the city Tenement Commission (1906 - 08) and as president of the Board of Civil Service (1911 - 13); and in 1908 he gained national recognition for his creation of what became the Kansas City Board of Public Welfare. Soon after the nomination of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 Walsh organized a Bureau of Social Service under the Democratic National Committee, which he hoped would become a permanent agency in support of legislation for social and economic reform. In 1913 President Wilson appointed Walsh chairman of the newly created Commission on Industrial Relations, set up by Congress to investigate the causes of labor-management strife. For the next two years the Commission traveled throughout the country, questioning leaders of business and labor. Though no legislation resulted, its findings did much to arouse public sympathy for labor's side in industrial disputes. The body continued its work under the name of the Committee on Industrial Relations, and Walsh remained at its head until 1918. In that year he was appointed co-chairman, with ex-President William Howard Taft, of the National War Labor Board. During the postwar decade much of Walsh's attention was occupied with the question of freedom for Ireland and with litigation involving civil liberties. As chairman of the American Commission for Irish Independence he went to Europe in 1919 to seek a hearing at the Paris Peace Conference for those delegates from Ireland who favored the complete removal of Brittish rule. Though this effort failed, he served as counsel for the self-proclaimed Irish Republic and kept in close touch with Eamon de Valera and other Irish leaders. Of the large number of civil liberties cases which he handled, the best known was that of the West Coast labor leader Tom Mooney, who had been convicted of murder, on doubtful evidence, in connection with the fatal bombing of the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day parade. Receiving no compensation for his years of effort and paying much of the legal expense himself, Walsh finally had the satisfaction of seeing Mooney pardoned early in 1939. He also defended the Communist leader William Z. Foster against the charge of criminal syndicalism and took part in the final attempt to stay the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Throughout his later career, beginning in 1919, Walsh acted as counsel for labor organizations in important litigation, earning a reputation as one of the leading labor lawyers in the United States. In the political sphere, Walsh's concern over Ireland for a time overshadowed his activities for domestic reform. In 1920 he attended both the Republican and Democratic national conventions seeking to have incorporated into their platforms American recognition of Irish independence. When his efforts failed, he moved on to press the Irish cause at a gathering of third-party elements in Chicago. There was some talk of running Walsh for president or vice-president on the Farmer-Labor ticket; he had earlier rejected one such overture from the "Committee of Forty-Eight, " a remnant of the prewar Progressive party. In the election he refused to support the Democratic candidate for president, James M. Cox, because of the latter's pro-League stand. Himself originally an exponent of the League of Nations, Walsh had grown increasingly disillusioned with it, particularly over the Irish question. In 1924 he again bolted the Democrats, campaigning vigorously for his close friend Robert M. La Follette, candidate of a new Progressive party. He returned to the Democratic fold in 1928 to back Alfred E. Smith, and four years later he organized the National Progressive League for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Walsh had meanwhile moved to New York, where Roosevelt, as governor, appointed him a member of the State Commission to Recodify the Public Service Law in 1929 and two years later made him chairman of the State Power Authority. An avowed foe of the "power trust, " Walsh directed the Authority in a series of studies designed to show the feasibility of low electric rates and helped to secure legislation permitting municipalities to go into the power business. Along with his friend Senator George W. Norris, Walsh was also an influence in shaping Roosevelt's ideas on public power which later gained national expression in the Tennessee Valley Authority. When, in 1936, liberal members of the bar formed the National Lawyers Guild in protest against what they considered the overly conservative attitude of the American Bar Association, Walsh became its first president. He resigned three years later, however, because he felt that the Guild did not take a satisfactory position against communist dictatorships as well as against other totalitarian governments. During the Spanish Civil War he served as counsel for the Committee for Recognition of the Basque Republic. He was a trustee of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and founder and chairman of the Catholic Citizens Committee for Ratification of the Federal Child Labor Amendment (1936 - 39). He was stricken fatally by a heart attack while at work in New York City and was buried in Kansas City.
(Excerpt from Ireland to-Day I could go on, as I had the ...)
Sanguine in temperament, Walsh was a man of great physical energy.
On October 21, 1891, he married Katherine M. O'Flaherty, by whom he had nine children: Marie, Louise, Cecilia, Francis Patrick, Edgar G. , John, Jerome, Virginia Agnes, and James. (The two oldest daughters became nuns, taking the names Frances Marie and Catherine Louise. )
