"Mike Quin" (1906–1947) was the pen name of the American Communist writer Paul Ryan, who also used a second pen name, "Robert Finnegan". He is best known for his posthumously published book The Big Strike (1949) about the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike.
Mike Quin was born Paul William Ryan in 1906 in San Francisco, California shortly after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. His father was an Irish-American traveling salesman "who drifted out of the family orbit" when Paul and his younger brother and sister were still children.[1] Paul's mother was an Irish-Jewish-French dressmaker. His family struggled to make ends meet and at age 15 he left school to begin earning money.[2]
Career
Paul Ryan took various jobs until age 19, when he became a seaman and first got involved in maritime unions. In the late 1920s, he obtained a job in a Hollywood bookstore, which was frequented by local writers.[3] One of the writers was a Marxist who helped radicalize Ryan, who then joined the John Reed Club chapter in Hollywood.[4]
In 1933, Ryan began his lifelong pursuit of a writing career by having a short story, "The Sacred Thing", published in Scribner's Magazine. He also started contributing to the John Reed Club's Partisan magazine, as well as to New Masses and the Western Worker (predecessor of People's Daily World). It was at this time that "Mike Quin" was born. Using the pseudonym, he published a 1933 pamphlet, "And We Are Millions: The Story of Homeless Youth", a collection of testimonies from unemployed, Depression era youths convicted of vagrancy by the American justice system.[5]
Quin wrote extensively about the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike for publications such as the Dispatcher of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). In 1936–1937, he wrote for the WPA Writers' Project. In 1938, he helped launch People's Daily World (later People's World).[6] It was the West Coast daily newspaper of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He served as executive editor and columnist for the paper, and remained with it for the rest of his life.
In 1940, Quin was a founding member of the "The Yanks Are Not Coming" committee,[7] which was established as a pro-neutrality group within the Maritime Federation of the Pacific. The committee's primary activity was dissemination of pamphlets urging labor union members to avoid the rising tide of "war fever".[8] At the time, it was also the position of the CPUSA (in the wake of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) for the U.S. to stay out of the European theater of World War II.[9] Quin's pamphlet "The Yanks Are Not Coming!" (1940) "reached an enormous audience, attracting such nationwide attention that Walter Winchell referred to the author as one of America's most dangerous men."[10] The pro-neutrality committee largely ceased to operate after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Quin's first published anthology, Dangerous Thoughts (1940), received a congratulatory letter from Theodore Dreiser, who wrote an introduction to the follow-up anthology, More Dangerous Thoughts (1941). Also in 1941, People's World published a collection of Quin's "The Enemy Within" serials. In 1943, the CIO hired him as a scriptwriter for a radio show entitled Facts to Fight Fascism. From 1943 to 1945, the CIO made Quin their "CIO Reporter on the Air". One of his final assignments for the CIO was to cover the United Nations Conference on International Organization, which was held in San Francisco from 25 April–26 June 1945. In the autumn of 1945, he prepared a series of radio broadcasts for the National Maritime Union, and one also for the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union.[11]
At the conclusion of WWII, Quin's job with the CIO ended. To earn money, he tried his hand at mystery writing under the pen name "Robert Finnegan".[12] The pattern he established was to use "Mike Quin" for all of his journalistic pieces, newspaper columns, and political essays. Then, late in his writing career, he chose "Robert Finnegan" as his pen name for mysteries and pulp fiction.[13]
Quin remained active in the CPUSA until his death. His last published book, The Big Strike, was later reprinted by the Party's publishing house, International Publishers.
Personal life and death
After an unsuccessful first marriage to a woman named Rose,[6] Quin married Mary King O'Donnell in 1945. They had a daughter, Colin Michaela, in July 1946.[14]
Following several months of undiagnosed illness and fatigue, Quin received the grim news in early spring 1947 that he had pancreatic cancer with only two months to live. This occurred just before he moved with Mary and Colin to Olema, California.[15]
Quin wrote "The Yanks Are Not Coming" originally as a pamphlet for the 1940 CIO annual conference in San Francisco.[9] His posthumous book The Big Strike was a compilation of his journalistic work covering the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike.
Contributions to the New Masses
"Modern Heroes: William Green and Matthew Woll" Poem (1936)[16]
