The Bread-Winners is an 1883 anti-labor novel by John Hay, who was Secretary to

the President under Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley's third Secretary of St
ate. Originally published anonymously in installments in The Century Magazine, t
he book attracted wide interest and provoked considerable speculation over the a
uthor's identity.
Hay wrote his only novel as a reaction to several strikes that affected him and
his business interests in the 1870s and early 1880s. In the main storyline, a we
althy former army captain, Arthur Farnham, organizes Civil War veterans to keep
the peace when the Bread-winners, a group of lazy and malcontented workers, call
a violent general strike.
Hay had left hints as to his identity in the novel, and some guessed right, but
he never acknowledged the book as his, and it did not appear with his name on it
until after his death in 1905. Hay's hostile view of organized labor was soon s
een as outdated, and the book is best remembered for its onetime popularity and
controversial nature.