Frank Joseph McNulty was born on August 10, 1872 in Londonderry, Ireland. He was the son of Owen McNulty, a veteran of the Union Army in the Civil War who had returned to Ireland after his marriage to Catherine O'Donnell in New York. When the boy was four years old the family returned to the United States and settled in New York City.
Frank Joseph McNulty was educated in the public schools.
McNulty became an inside electrical wireman, moved to Perth Amboy, N. J. , and there assisted in organizing a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He early became a leader in his organization and in 1901 was elected international vice-president of the Brotherhood, with headquarters in Springfield, Ill. Two years later, in 1903, he became president and held this office until 1919 when, after several months' leave of absence, he resigned to continue in the position, in which he had acted since 1917, of deputy director of public safety in Newark. From 1908 to 1913 he carried the Brotherhood successfully through one of the most bitter and hard-fought internal struggles that has ever occurred in any American labor union a socialistic (industrial union) secession movement which involved over half the membership and threatened the entire American labor movement. In the end, supported by the American Federation of Labor and victorious in a series of legal battles with the rival organization, he succeeded in his diplomatic efforts to win back, on liberal terms, the bulk of the seceders and in further increasing the membership until the Brotherhood became the fourth largest American labor organization. In 1906 he was a member of the commission sent to Great Britain by the National Civic Federation to study public ownership. During the war he served as vice-chairman of the Railway Board of Adjustment No. 2, but resigned this office in August 1918 to go to Italy and France for three months with a government commission of five labor leaders, selected by the American Federation of Labor on the request of President Wilson, to strengthen the morale of the Italian working men by showing them that the American labor movement vigorously supported the war. The delegation traveled through the industrial districts of Italy by automobile, addressing sometimes a dozen meetings a day, visited the battle front, dined with the King of Italy, and was entertained by General Diaz. In 1922, after his retirement in 1921 from the city government of Newark, McNulty was elected to Congress from the eighth congressional district of New Jersey as a Democrat and served from March 4, 1923, to March 3, 1925. Always stronger in dealing with individuals than with large groups, he exerted his chief influence in Congress as a member of the committee on labor, though he made short speeches on prison labor and on the railroad labor bill. Defeated for reëlection in the Coolidge landslide of 1924, he spent the remainder of his life in Washington, to which the headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers had been moved, and in Newark, where he died suddenly on May 26, 1926.
McNulty was the representative of New Jersey's 8th District in the House of Representatives, serving from 1923 to 1925. Upon McNulty's retirement, as a mark of appreciation of his services, he was given the title of "president emeritus" an innovation in the labor movement and also became chairman of the international executive council of the Brotherhood, a position which he held throughout the remainder of his life.
McNulty's chief constructive policies were the promotion of craft improvement to rescue electrical workers from the condition of an unskilled group and the settlement of disputes by reason and negotiation instead of by strikes.
McNulty was distinguished in appearance, with an excellent tenor voice, a love of sports, great personal courage, undeviating loyalty to his friends, a reputation as a wit, and considerable personal magnetism and charm.
In 1893 McNulty married Edith H. Parker, in Jersey City.
