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{{Infobox book {{Infobox book
| name = The Breadwinners | name = The Bread-Winners
| image = The Bread-Winners, a Social Study (1883) - Cover.jpg | image =
| caption = First edition cover, 1883 | caption =
| author = ] | author = ]
| illustrator = | illustrator =
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}} }}


'''''The Breadwinners''''' is an 1883<ref name=self/> book by ]. Hay's second book is about the effects of industrialism on a post-] America<ref>{{cite web| title=Industrialism and the American Aristocrat: A Study of John Hay and His Novel, The Bread-Winners| last=Jaher| first=Frederic| publisher=University of Illinois Press| year=1972| accessdate=2012-03-27| url=http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40190942?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21100688944281}}</ref> It was among the best selling books in the United States in 1884.<ref name="popular">]. , p. 99, 309 (1950)</ref> '''''The Bread-Winners: A Social Study''''' is an 1883<ref name=self/> book by ]. Hay's second book is about the effects of industrialism on a post-] America<ref>{{cite web| title=Industrialism and the American Aristocrat: A Study of John Hay and His Novel, The Bread-Winners| last=Jaher| first=Frederic| publisher=University of Illinois Press| year=1972| accessdate=2012-03-27| url=http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40190942?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21100688944281}}</ref> It was among the best selling books in the United States in 1884.<ref name="popular">]. , p. 99, 309 (1950)</ref>
== Plot ==
One of the wealthiest and most cultured residents of the city of the famed Algonquin Avenue in Buffland (a city intended to be Cleveland), Captain Arthur Farnham is a Civil War veteran and a widower—his wife died of illness while accompanying him at a remote frontier post. Since he left the army, he has sought to involve himself in municipal affairs, but fails though political naiveté. The victorious party has thrown him the sop of chairman of the library board. In that capacity, he is approached by Maud Matchlin, daughter of carpenter Saul Matchlin, a man content with his lot. His daughter is not, and seeks employment at the library as a means of bettering herself. Farnham agrees to put her case, but is defeated by a majority on the board who have their own candidate. She finds herself attracted to Farnham, who is more interested in Alice Belding, daughter of Farnham's wealthy widow neighbor.

Saul Matchlin hoped that his daughter would become a house servant, but having attended high school, she feels herself too good for that. She is admired by Saul's assistant Sam Sleeny, who lives with the Matchlins, a match favored by her father. Sleeny is busy repairing Farnham's outbuildings, and is made jealous by interactions between the captain and Maud. In Sleeny's discontent, Andrew Jackson Offitt (true name ]), a locksmith and "professional reformer", tries to get him to join the Bread-Winners, a labor organization. Sleeny is content with his employment, "Old Saul Matchin and me come to an agreement about time and pay, and both of us was suited. Ef he's got his heel into me, I don't feel it," but due to his unhappiness over Maud, is easy game for Offitt, who gets him to join, and to pay the dues that are Offitt's visible means of support.

Maud has become convinced she is in love with Farnham, and declares her love for him. It is not reciprocated, and the scene is witnessed both by Mrs. Belding and by Sleeny. The widow believes Farnham when he states he had given Maud no encouragement, but her daughter, when her mother incautiously tells her of the incident, does not believe him. When Farnham declares his love for Alice, she turns him down and asks him never to renew the subject.

Offitt's membership has tired of endless talk, and plans a general strike, a fact of which Farnham is informed by Mr. Temple, a salty-talking vice president of a rolling mill. An element among the strikers also plans to loot houses along Algonquin Avenue, including Farnham's. The strike begins, paralyzing Buffland's commerce, though it is initially non-violent. Neither the mayor nor the chief of police, when approached by Farnham, are willing to guard Algonquin Avenue. Farnham proceeds to organize Union veterans, and purchases weapons to arm them. After Farnham's force rescues the mayor from being roughed up, he deputizes them as special police—on condition there is no expense to the city.

Meanwhile, Maud tells her father she will never marry Sleeny. She is wooed by Bott, who is a spiritualist and a Bread-Winner, and also by Offitt. Neither meet success, though Offitt dexterously prevents her from actually saying no, and through flattery and stories of his alleged past piques her interest.

By the end of the second day of the strike, which has spread to Buffland's rival city of Clearfield , the mood among the laborers has turned ugly. Temple warns that the attacks on Algonquin Avenue are imminent, and aids Farnham's force in turning back assaults on the captain's house and on the Belding residence. Bott and Sleeny are captured by the force; the former is sent to prison but Farnham has pity on Sleeny as a good workman, and he serves only a few days. The settlement of the strike in Clearfield takes the wind out of the Buffland action, and soon most are back at work, though some agitators are dismissed.

Offitt, despite being one of the leaders of the assault on the Belding house, has escaped blame and befriends the sullen Sleeny on his release. Upon learning that some workers pay their landlord, Farnham, in the evening of the rent day at his home, Offitt comes up with a scheme—rob and murder Farnham and let Sleeny take the blame as he elopes with Maud. Accordingly, Offitt sneaks into Farnham's house with Sleeny's hammer, but just as he is striking the fatal blow, Alice Belding, who can see what is going on from her house through an opera glass, screams, distracting Offitt enough so that Farnham is hurt by the blow, but not killed. Offitt hurries away with the money, and proceeds to frame Sleeny. Sleeny escapes jail after realizing Offitt's treason, and kills him. The stolen money is found on Offitt's body, clearing Sleeny in the assault on Farnham, but the carpenter must still stand trial for the killing of Offitt, at which he is aided by partisan testimony from Maud. A sympathetic jury ignores the law to find him innocent. Sleeny wins Maud's hand in marriage, and Farnham and Alice Belding are to be united.

==Background==
=== John Hay ===
] was born in Indiana in 1838, and spent his childhood in frontier Illinois. During his apprenticeship to become a lawyer in his uncle's office in ], he came to know ], and worked for his campaign in 1860. He was made Lincoln's assistant ], and spent the years of the ] working for the President, with whom he forged a close relationship.

After the war, he worked for several years in diplomatic posts abroad, then in 1870 became a writer for ]'s ], continuing there working for ] after Greeley's death in 1872. Hay was a gifted writer for the ''Tribune'', but also achieved success with published works. He had been Class Poet at ] and in 1871 published '']'', a group of poems written in the dialect of frontier ], where Hay had attended school. The same year, he published ''Castilian Days'', a collection of essays on Spain, some of which had been written while Hay was posted as a diplomat in Madrid.

In 1873, Hay began to woo Clara Stone, daughter of wealthy Cleveland industrialist ], and married her in 1874.
The marriage made Hay wealthy. The Hays moved to Cleveland, where John managed Amasa Stone's investments.{{sfn|Zeitz|pp=203–05}} In December 1876, a train of Stone's ] was crossing a bridge, for the design of which Stone held the patent, when the structure collapsed. The ], including the subsequent fire, killed 92 people, the worst rail disaster in American history to that point. Stone was widely blamed, and left Hay in charge of his businesses in mid-1877{{sfn|Zeitz|p=211}} as he went to travel in Europe.{{sfn|Zeitz|pp=222–23}}

===Postwar labor troubles and literary reaction ===
Although the ] did not itself transform the United States from an agrarian society of small towns and agriculture, it gave great impetus to a transformation already underway, especially in the North. The challenges of feeding, clothing, and equipping the ], and to provide the infrastructure for the war effort, made many wealthy, and led to an industrialized America.{{sfn|Zeitz|pp=214–15}}

This transformation did not stop at ]; industrial production in the United States increased by 75% from 1865 to 1873, making the U.S. second only to Britain in that regard. Railroad construction made practical the exploitation of the trans-Mississippi West.{{sfn|Zeitz|p=216}} Although the railroads helped fuel an economic boom, they proved a two-edged sword in the 1870s. The 1872 ], over graft in the construction of the ], shook the ] to its highest levels. Railroad bankruptcies in the ] led to loss of jobs, wage cuts, and business failures, and to the ],{{sfn|Jaher|p=71}} when strike over wage cuts on the ] spread to other lines, the Lake Shore, much to Hay's outrage. Though the Lake Shore dispute, unlike those elsewhere, was settled without violence, Hay blamed foreign agitators for the dispute,.{{sfn|Taliaferro|pp=173–74}} He condemned the "unarmed rebellion of foreign workingmen, mostly Irish" and informed Stone by letter, "the very devil seems to have entered into the lower classes of working men and there are plenty of scoundrels to encourage them to all lengths."{{sfn|Zeitz|p=223}} The strike was ended by federal troops sent by President ], but at the cost of over 100 civilian deaths.{{sfn|Dalrymple|p=133}}

Public opinion was generally against the strikers in the 1877 dispute, calling for armed suppression to preserve property and stability. Those events featured in many books of the period, such as ]'s ''An Iron Crown: A Tale of the Great Republic'' (1885), with novelists sympathizing with the demands of the strikers, though decrying their violence.{{sfn|Jaher|p=72–73}} Another labor dispute that likely affected Hay's writing of ''The Bread-Winners'' was the Cleveland Rolling Mills strike of June 1882, which occurred right before Hay first submitted his manuscript. During the dispute, union members violently attempted to prevent strikebreakers from entering.{{sfn|Taliaferro|p=219}} Another strike that may have affected the final form of ''The Bread-Winners'' was that against ] in 1883—Hay was then a director of that corporation.{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|p=54}}

''The Bread-Winners'' is sometimes characterized as the first anti-labor novel, but it was preceded by ]'s ''The Stillwater Tragedy'' (1880).{{sfn|Gale|p=87}} Aldrich had little knowledge of workers, and his work was not successful. Nevertheless, ''The Stillwater Tragedy'' was one of a very few novels to deal with labor unions at all, prior to Hay's book.{{sfn|Vandersee|p=253}}

==Writing ==
Sometime during the winter or spring of 1881–82, Hay wrote ''The Bread-Winners''. At the time, he was spending much time writing his part of the massive Lincoln biography he was compiling with ], '']''. His work on the Lincoln project had been delayed by ] and attendant medical treatment, and was further delayed by ''The Bread-Winners'', as once Hay began work on his only novel, he found himself unable to put it aside. The manuscript was completed by June 1882, when he sent it to ], editor of '']'', though whether he was submitting it for publication or advice is unclear. Gilder called it "a powerful book", but submitted no immediate offer for it.{{sfn|Taliaferro|p=213}}

Aside from his family and Gilder, the only person who likely knew that Hay was writing his novel was his friend ]. In 1880, Adams had published '']'', anonymously, and when Hay arrived in Britain in July 1882, he found speculation as to its authorship to be a popular pursuit. He sent Adams a copy of a cheap British edition, writing "I think of writing a novel in a hurry and printing it as by the author of ''Democracy''."{{sfn|Taliaferro|p=214}}

During the summer of 1882, Hay showed the manuscript to author ], a friend of his. Howells urged Aldrich, editor of the '']'', to publish it, who agreed, sight unseen, on condition that Hay allow his name to be used as author. Hay was not willing to allow this, and resubmitted the manuscript to Gilder, who agreed to Hay's condition that it be published anonymously.{{sfn|Taliaferro|p=215}} In an anonymous letter published in ''The Century Magazine'' after the book was published, Hay alleged that the reason he chose to remain anonymous was that he was engaged in business where his stature would be diminished if it were known he had written a novel. According to Scott Dalrymple in his journal article on the book, the likely real reason was that if it were published under Hay's name, it would harm him politically, "To attack labor overtly, in print, would not have been politically prudent."{{sfn|Dalyrmple|p=136}} ], in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, speculated that Hay, in his later career, would not have been confirmed either as ambassador to Great Britain (1897) or as Secretary of State (1898) had senators associated him with ''The Bread-Winners''.{{sfn|Vandersee|p=245}}

Although ''The Bread-Winners'' was published anonymously, Hay left clues to his identity throughout the novel. Farnham leads the library board, as did Hay's father. Hay's brother Leonard served on the frontier, like Farnham; another brother, Leonard, grew exotic flowers, as does Farnham. Algonquin Avenue, analog of Cleveland's ] (where Hay lived), is home to the novel's protagonist. In the opening chapter, Farnham's study is described in detail and closely resembles Hay's.{{sfn|Taliaferro|pp=217–18}}

==Serialization ==
In March 1883, the Century Company sent a postcard, with copies likely going to newspapers and potential subscribers. With the heading "Literary Note from The Century Co.", it announced that an anonymous novel, "unusual in scene and subject, and powerful in treatment", and giving some information about the plot, would soon be serialized in the pages of the ''Century''.{{sfn|Vandersee|p=246}} The serial was originally supposed to begin in April or May, but was postponed because ]'s novel ''Through One Administration'' ran long.{{sfn|Sloane 1971|p=260 n.13}} On July 20, the date of release of the August number, the company placed newspaper ads for ''The Bread-Winners'', and stated that "the story&nbsp;... abounds in local description and social studies, which heighten the interest and continually pique curiosity as to its authorship".{{sfn|Vandersee|p=246}} ''The Bread-Winners'' appeared in the ''Century'' from August 1883 to January 1884, when it was published as a book by Harper and Brothers.{{shn|Zeitz|p=224}}

By July 25, Cleveland newspapers were taking note of the literary mystery, with initial guesses that the author was a former Clevelander who had moved east. In early August, the '']'' reported that the author was the late ], a Cleveland industrialist and philanthropist—the manuscript had supposedly been found among his papers. Few believed the chronically-ill and introverted bachelor could have created the vivid portrait of the shapely Maud Matchlin. With Case dismissed, speculation turned to other Ohioans, including Superintendent of Schools ], former congressman ] (author of twelve books), and John Hay. The '']'' on August 18 suggested, "we have an idea that none of these guesses are correct".{{sfn|Vandersee|pp=247–48}} Others suggested that the anonymous author of ''Democracy'' (that Henry Adams had written it was not yet known) had penned a second controversial work.{{sfn|Vandersee|p=248}}

The furor fueled sales; the August issue of ''The Century Magazine'', in which the first four chapters were serialized, sold out. The September issue also sold out, but went to a second printing. The ''Century'' loudly proclaimed these facts in promotional advertisements, and that it was coining money as a result. As the second installment was read, and the character of Alice Belding became prominent, there was speculation in the press that a female hand had written the novel, with suspicion falling on ] (great-niece of ]), whose novels were set in eastern Ohio. On September 18, the Washington correspondent for the ''Transcript'' noted the resemblance of Farnham's study to Hay's. Other candidates for the authorship were Howells (though he quickly denied it) and Hay friend ], a writer and explorer.{{sfn|Vandersee|pp=248–51}}

On October 23, 1883, an interview with Hay, who had just returned from a trip to Colorado, appeared in the pages of the ''Cleveland Leader''. Hay stated that such a novel would be beyond his powers, and that inaccuracies in the depiction of the local scene suggested to him that it was not written by a Clevelander. He offered no candidates who might have written it. Nevertheless, in November, the ''Leader'' ran a column speculating that Hay was the author, based on phrases used both in ''The Bread-Winners'' and in Hay's earlier book, ''Castilian Days'', and by the fact that one character in the novel was from ], Hay's birthplace. Further textual analyses led a number of newspapers in early 1884 (when the novel appeared in book form) to state it had been written by Hay.{{sfn|Vandersee|pp=255–58}}

Tiring of the guessing game, some newspapers descended to satire. The ] surveyed the lengthy list of candidates and announced that "the authors of ''The Bread Winners'' {{sic}} will all meet at ] next summer".{{sfn|Vandersee|pp=255–56}} The appearance of ] ] in December 1883 caused the Rochester ''Herald'' to opine that he had written ''The Bread-Winners'' "because a careful comparison of his message with the story shows many words common to both".{{sfn|Vandersee|p=259}} Another ] paper, the Troy ''Times'' evoked ]'s tales of ]: "We cannot tell a lie. We wrote ''The Bread winners'' {{sic}} with our own little hatchet. If any one doubts it, we can show him the hatchet."{{sfn|Vandersee|p=259}} This admission, the Buffalo ''Express'' felt, should put an end to the discussion.{{sfn|Vandersee|p=259}}

== Publication and aftermath ==
By the standards of the day, ''The Bread-Winners'' was a modest bestseller, with 25,000 copies sold in the United States by mid-1885. Two editions were published in Britain, a pirated edition in Canada, and there was a reported sale of 3,000 in the Australian colonies. Translations were published in French, German, and Swedish. The book did not sell as well as the leading bestsellers of the day—] considered anything he wrote that sold less than 50,000 copies not worth publishing—but ''Democracy'' sold only 14,000 copies in the U.S., and took four years to do it. Nevertheless, ''The Bread-Winner'' did not compare with the leading bestsellers of the 1880s, that included ]'s '']'' (1880), selling 290,000 by 1888, and ]'s tale of the future, '']'' (1887), that sold nearly 1,000,000 copies in its first decade.{{sfn|Vandersee|pp=267–68}}

John Hay never acknowledged the book, nor was it attributed to him in his lifetime; as Gilder put it, "guessing right isn't finding out".{{sfn|Vandersee|p=268}} At his death in 1905, obituarists were uncertain whether to assign the novel to him, an exception being '']'', which used handwriting analysis to link the book to him, and published it in its entirety over six Sundays later that year.{{sfn|Vandersee|pp=268–69}} In 1907, with the permission of Clara Hay, the book was officially acknowledged as his,{{sfn|Vandersee|p=269}} and in 1916 it was republished with Hay's name, with an introduction by his son, Clarence.

==Reaction==

===Critical===
''The Bread-Winners'' received some favorable reviews, such as that by G. P. Lathrop in ''Atlantic Monthly'' in May 1884. Lathrop applauded the author's portrayal of the characters, and suggested that Maud Matchlin was a notable addition to the "gallery of national types" in American literature.{{sfn|Sloane 1970|p=180}} The ''Century'' reviewed the book the same month, in an article written by Howells, though he signed it only "W". He saw Maud as "the great discovery of the book" and applauded it as a treatment of an area of American life not previously written about.{{sfn|Sloane 1970|p=180}} Similarly, a reviewer for '']'' liked the parts of the novel set among the lower classes.{{sfn|Sloane 1970|pp=180–81}}

According to David E. E. Sloane, "most American critics found it harder to overlook the coarseness of the book and its treatment of the labor problem."{{sfn|Sloane 1970|p=179}} A reviewer for ''Literary World'' in January 1884 called ''The Bread-Winners'' a "greasy, slangy, malodorous book&nbsp;... repulsive from the very first step".{{sfn|Sloane 1970|p=179}} ''The Dial'', the following month, while praising the author's use of language, deemed the book "a preposterous tissue of incidents" populated by two sets of "exaggerated types", one vicious, the other absurd.{{sfn|Sloane 1970|p=179}} ''Continent'', also in February 1884, suggested that "he criticisms as a whole are severe, and justly so, the book being, with all its brilliancy, faithless and hopeless."{{sfn|Sloane 1970|p=179}} A letter in ''The Century Magazine'' deemed the novel "a piece of snobbishness imported from England&nbsp;... It is simply untruthful&nbsp;... to continue the assertion that trade unions are mainly controlled and strikes originated by agitators, interested only for what they make out of them".{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|p=55}}

British critics were generally more favorable toward the book than were American ones. In a column in the '']'', ''The Bread-Winners'' was seen as "eminently clever and readable, a worthy contribution to that American novel-literature which is at the present day, on the whole, ahead of our own," a statement which Harper's used in advertisements.{{sfn|Sloane 1970|p=178}} A reviewer for London's '']'' described the book as "one of the strongest and most striking stories of the last ten years".{{sfn|Zeitz|p=225}}

===Imitations===
Hay's book prompted a number of imitative or satirical works. Of these, the most successful was ''The Money-Makers'' (1885), by Henry Francis Keenan, a former colleague of Hay's at the ''New-York Tribune''. Keenan's work left little doubt that he had fixed on Hay as author of ''The Bread-Winners'', as it contains characters clearly evoking Hay, his family, and associates. Aaron Grimestone parallels Amasa Stone, Hay's father-in-law.{{sfn|Bender|p=320}} When the Academy Opera House collapses, taking hundreds of lives, Grimestone is deemed responsible for its faulty construction—as Stone was for the deaths in the Ashtabula railway disaster. Grimestone eventually commits suicide, as did Stone in 1883. His daughter Eleanor parallels Clara Stone Hay, and Keenan's descriptions of Eleanor make it clear she is, like Clara, heavyset.{{sfn|Dalrymple|pp=137–38}} The character Archie Hilliard is modeled after Hay: Hilliard was a secretary to a high official in Washington, and later a diplomat and editor, entering journalism in the same year as Hay.{{sfn|Bender|p=320}}

When Hay received a copy of ''The Money-Makers'', according to later accounts, he is said to have hurried to New York to buy up as many copies as he could.{{sfn|Bender|p=320}} Later that year, a laudatory biographical sketch of Stone, written by "J.H." appeared in the ''Magazine of Western History'', attributing Stone's suicide to insomnia. According to Clifford A. Bender in his journal article on the Keenan book, "the principal reason ''The Money-Makers'' has remained in obscurity seems to be that John Hay suppressed it," and though he deemed it superior to ''The Bread-Winners'',{{sfn|Bender|pp=319–20}} historian Scott Dalrymple suggested that Keenan's book "seems more the product of a personal vendetta than an ideological disagreement".{{sfn|Dalrymple|p=138}}

==Themes==
===Labor===
Dalrymple, in his journal article on ''The Bread-Winners'', argued, "the brunt of Hay's ire seems aimed less toward these working men themselves than toward troublesome union organizers. Left to their own devices, Hay believes, most laborers are reasonable creatures".{{sfn|Dalrymple|p=136}} Hay biographers Howard L. Kushner and Anne H. Sherrill agree, writing that Hay was attempting "to expose the way in which this class, due to its ignorance, fell prey to the villainies of false social reformers".{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|p=54}} To Hay, unions were dangerous as they may manipulate the uneducated worker; better that laborers work out their pay and conditions individually with their employer, as Sleeny does with Matchin.{{sfn|Dunne|p=31}} Jaher noted that Offitt, a self-described reformer, "is arrogant, tyrannical and self-righteous. Hay's message is clear: the established system needs no basic change; eliminate the agitator and harmony returns."{{sfn|Jaher|p=85}}

Offitt, at birth, was given the name Andrew Jackson;{{efn|He is rechristened "Ananias" as a small boy after stealing money from his father. See {{Harvnb|Hay|p=90}}.}} which according to Hay shows that the bearer "is the son of illiterate parents, with no family pride or affections, but filled with a bitter and savage partisanship which found its expression in a servile worship of the most injurious personality in American history"{{sfn|Hay|pp=89–90}} Hay despised President Jackson and ], which he deemed corrupt and responsible for the continuation of the slave system that Hay saw overthrown at huge cost in the American Civil War. Hay feared a return to values he deemed anticapitalist, and made the Bread-winners, "the laziest and most incapable workmen in town", whose ideals are pre-industrialist and foreign in origin. Hay saw no excuse for violence; as the will of the people could be expressed through the ballot, the remedy for any grievances was the next election.{{sfn|Kushner & Sherrill|pp=54–55}}

Jaher noted that Hay's view of what a worker should be is summed up in the character of Saul Matchin. Although a successful craftsman, he remains within the working class, not seeking to rise above his station, and is content with his lot. His children are not willing to remain within that class, however: the sons run away and the daughters seek to marry well, symbolizing the change being wrought by industrialization.{{sfn|Jaher|p=86}} Robert Dunne pointed out that the working classes are not depicted favorably in Hay's novel, but as "stupid and ill-bred, at the best loyal servants to the gentry and at the worst overly ambitious and a threat to the welfare of Buffland".{{sfn|Dunne|p=31}}

===Class===
Farnham and Alice Belding are the two characters in the novel who were never part of the working class, but who are scions of wealth. Other members of the elite are more vulgar: Mrs. Belding's indulgence in gossip endangers the budding romance between her daughter and Farnham, while Mr. Temple, though brave and steadfast, can only discuss a few topics, such as horse racing, and his speech is peppered with profanities. The rest of Buffland's society, as displayed at a party at Temple's house, is composed of "a group of gossipy matrons, vacuous town belles, and silly swains".{{sfn|Jaher|pp=90�–91}}

==Historical view==
According to Dalrymple, ",the anti-labor novels fail to hold up particularly well. None is a masterpiece of language, plotting, or characterization. Ideologically all seem quite heavy-handed, choosing to make their points with a nearly complete lack of subtlety.{{sfn|Dalrymple|p=141}}


==References== ==References==
{{reflist}} {{reflist}}


==See also== ==Notes==
{{notes}}
==Bibliography==

;Books
*{{cite book
|last=Gale
|first=Robert L.
|title=John Hay
|series=Twayne's American Authors
|publisher=Twayne Publishers
|location=Boston
|year=1978
|isbn=0-8057-7199-9|ref={{sfnRef|Gale}}
}}
*{{cite book
|last=Hay
|first=John
|title=The Bread-Winners: A Social Study
|year=1883
|location=New York
|publisher=Harper & Brothers
|ref={{sfnRef|Hay}}
}}
*{{cite book
|last=Kushner
|first=Howard I.
|last2=Sherrill
|first2=Anne Hummel
|title=John Milton Hay: The Union of Poetry and Politics
|series=Twayne's World Leaders
|publisher=Twayne Publishers
|location=Boston
|year=1977
|isbn=0-8057-7719-9
|ref={{sfnRef|Kushner & Sherrill}}
}}
*{{cite book
|last=Taliaferro
|first =John
|title=All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, From Lincoln to Roosevelt
|publisher=Simon & Schuster
|location=New York
|year=2013
|isbn=978-1-4165-9741-4
|edition=Kindle
|ref={{sfnRef|Taliaferro}}
}}
*{{cite book
|last=Zeitz
|first =Joshua
|authorlink=Joshua Zeitz
|title=Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln's Image
|publisher=Viking Penguin
|location=New York
|year=2014
|isbn=978-1-101-63807-1
|edition=Kindle
|ref={{sfnRef|Zeitz}}
}}

;Journals and other sources
*{{cite journal
|last=Bender
|first=Clifford A.
|title=Another Forgotten Novel
|journal= Modern Language Notes
|volume=41
|number=5
|date=May, 1926
|pages= 319-322
|jstor=2914050 .
|ref={{sfnRef|Bender}}
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Dalrymple
|first=Scott
|title=John Hay's Revenge: Anti-labor novels, 1880–1905
|journal=Business and Economic History
|volume=28
|number=1
|date=Fall 1999
|pages=133–42
|url=http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHprint/v028n1/p0133-p0142.pdf
|ref={{sfnRef|Dalrymple}}
}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Davis
|first=Harold E.
|title=The Citizenship of John Perdicaris
|journal=The Journal of Modern History
|volume=13
|number=4
|date=December 1941
|pages=517–526
|jstor=1874246
|ref={{sfnRef|Davis}}
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Dunne
|first=Robert
|title=Dueling Ideologies of America in ''The Bread-Winner'' and ''The Money-Makers''
|journal=American Literary Realism, 1870-1910
|volume=28
|number=3
|date=Spring 1996
|pages=30–37
|jstor=27746664
|ref={{sfnRef|Dunne}}
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Friedlaender
|first=Marc
|title=Henry Hobson Richardson, Henry Adams, and John Hay
|journal=Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series
|volume=81<!-- no issue number given -->
|year=1969
|pages=137–66
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*{{cite journal
|last=Howells
|first=William Dean
|title=John Hay in Literature
|journal=The North American Review
|volume=181
|number=586
|date=September 1905
|pages=343–51
|jstor=25105451
|ref={{sfnRef|Howells}}
}}{{subscription}} .
*{{cite journal
|last=Isaac
|first=Larry
|title=Movements, Aesthetics, and Markets in Literary Change: Making the American Labor Problem Novel
|journal=American Sociological Review
|volume=74
|number=6
|date=December 2009
|pages=938–65
|ref={{sfnRef|Isaac}}
|jstor=27801502
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Jaher
|first=Frederic Cople
|title=Industrialism and the American Aristocrat: A Social Study of John Hay and His Novel, the Bread-Winners
|journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
|volume=65
|number=1
|date=Spring 1972
|pages=69–93
|ref={{sfnRef|Jaher}}
|jstor=40190942
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Kushner
|first=Howard I.
|title='The Strong God Circumstance': The Political Career of John Hay
|journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
|volume=67
|number=4
|date=September 1974
|pages=352–84
|ref={{sfnRef|Kushner}}
|jstor=40191317
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Monteiro
|first=George
|title=John Hay and the Union Generals
|journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
|volume=69
|number=1
|date=February 1976
|pages=46–66
|jstor=40191692
|ref={{sfnRef|Monteiro}}
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Sloane
|first=David E. E.
|title=John Hay's ''The Bread-Winners'' as Literary Realism
|journal=American Literary Realism, 1870-1910
|volume=2
|number=3
|date=Fall 1969
|pages=276–79
|jstor=27747664
|ref={{sfnRef|Sloane 1969}}
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Sloane
|first=David E. E.
|title=John Hay (1838-1905)
|journal=American Literary Realism, 1870-1910
|volume=3
|number=2
|date=Spring 1970
|pages=178–88
|jstor= 27747706
|ref={{sfnRef|Sloane 1970}}
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Vandersee
|first=Charles
|title=The Great Literary Mystery of the Gilded Age
|journal=American Literary Realism, 1870-1910
|volume=7
|number=3
|date=Summer, 1974
|jstor=27747927
|ref={{sfnRef|Vandersee}}
}}{{subscription}} .
*{{cite journal
|last=Woolman
|first=David
|journal=Military History
|date=October 1997
|volume=14
|issue=4
|title=Did Theodore Roosevelt Overreact When an American was Kidnapped in Morocco? Were Seven Warships Really Necessary?
|ref={{sfnRef|Woolman}}<!-- note: from GMU database. No useable link or page numbers -->
}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Stevenson Jr.
|first=James D.
|last2=Stevenson
|first=Randehl
|title=John Milton Hay's Literary Influence
|journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
|date=Spring–Summer 2006
|volume=99
|number=1
|pages=19–27
|jstor=40193908
|ref={{sfnRef|Stevenson & Stevenson}}
}}{{subscription}}
*{{cite journal
|last=Zeitz
|first=Joshua
|title=Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay and the War For Lincoln's Image
|journal=Smithsonian
|date=February 2014
|volume=44
|issue=10
|ref={{sfnRef|Zeitz 2014b}}
}}

==External links==
at ] at ]


{{DEFAULTSORT:Breadwinners}} {{DEFAULTSORT:The Bread-Winners}}
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Revision as of 17:16, 31 July 2014

The Bread-Winners
AuthorJohn Hay
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarper & Brothers
Publication date1883
Publication placeUnited States
Pages320
ISBN1436647398

The Bread-Winners: A Social Study is an 1883 book by John Hay. Hay's second book is about the effects of industrialism on a post-Civil War America It was among the best selling books in the United States in 1884.

Plot

One of the wealthiest and most cultured residents of the city of the famed Algonquin Avenue in Buffland (a city intended to be Cleveland), Captain Arthur Farnham is a Civil War veteran and a widower—his wife died of illness while accompanying him at a remote frontier post. Since he left the army, he has sought to involve himself in municipal affairs, but fails though political naiveté. The victorious party has thrown him the sop of chairman of the library board. In that capacity, he is approached by Maud Matchlin, daughter of carpenter Saul Matchlin, a man content with his lot. His daughter is not, and seeks employment at the library as a means of bettering herself. Farnham agrees to put her case, but is defeated by a majority on the board who have their own candidate. She finds herself attracted to Farnham, who is more interested in Alice Belding, daughter of Farnham's wealthy widow neighbor.

Saul Matchlin hoped that his daughter would become a house servant, but having attended high school, she feels herself too good for that. She is admired by Saul's assistant Sam Sleeny, who lives with the Matchlins, a match favored by her father. Sleeny is busy repairing Farnham's outbuildings, and is made jealous by interactions between the captain and Maud. In Sleeny's discontent, Andrew Jackson Offitt (true name Ananias), a locksmith and "professional reformer", tries to get him to join the Bread-Winners, a labor organization. Sleeny is content with his employment, "Old Saul Matchin and me come to an agreement about time and pay, and both of us was suited. Ef he's got his heel into me, I don't feel it," but due to his unhappiness over Maud, is easy game for Offitt, who gets him to join, and to pay the dues that are Offitt's visible means of support.

Maud has become convinced she is in love with Farnham, and declares her love for him. It is not reciprocated, and the scene is witnessed both by Mrs. Belding and by Sleeny. The widow believes Farnham when he states he had given Maud no encouragement, but her daughter, when her mother incautiously tells her of the incident, does not believe him. When Farnham declares his love for Alice, she turns him down and asks him never to renew the subject.

Offitt's membership has tired of endless talk, and plans a general strike, a fact of which Farnham is informed by Mr. Temple, a salty-talking vice president of a rolling mill. An element among the strikers also plans to loot houses along Algonquin Avenue, including Farnham's. The strike begins, paralyzing Buffland's commerce, though it is initially non-violent. Neither the mayor nor the chief of police, when approached by Farnham, are willing to guard Algonquin Avenue. Farnham proceeds to organize Union veterans, and purchases weapons to arm them. After Farnham's force rescues the mayor from being roughed up, he deputizes them as special police—on condition there is no expense to the city.

Meanwhile, Maud tells her father she will never marry Sleeny. She is wooed by Bott, who is a spiritualist and a Bread-Winner, and also by Offitt. Neither meet success, though Offitt dexterously prevents her from actually saying no, and through flattery and stories of his alleged past piques her interest.

By the end of the second day of the strike, which has spread to Buffland's rival city of Clearfield , the mood among the laborers has turned ugly. Temple warns that the attacks on Algonquin Avenue are imminent, and aids Farnham's force in turning back assaults on the captain's house and on the Belding residence. Bott and Sleeny are captured by the force; the former is sent to prison but Farnham has pity on Sleeny as a good workman, and he serves only a few days. The settlement of the strike in Clearfield takes the wind out of the Buffland action, and soon most are back at work, though some agitators are dismissed.

Offitt, despite being one of the leaders of the assault on the Belding house, has escaped blame and befriends the sullen Sleeny on his release. Upon learning that some workers pay their landlord, Farnham, in the evening of the rent day at his home, Offitt comes up with a scheme—rob and murder Farnham and let Sleeny take the blame as he elopes with Maud. Accordingly, Offitt sneaks into Farnham's house with Sleeny's hammer, but just as he is striking the fatal blow, Alice Belding, who can see what is going on from her house through an opera glass, screams, distracting Offitt enough so that Farnham is hurt by the blow, but not killed. Offitt hurries away with the money, and proceeds to frame Sleeny. Sleeny escapes jail after realizing Offitt's treason, and kills him. The stolen money is found on Offitt's body, clearing Sleeny in the assault on Farnham, but the carpenter must still stand trial for the killing of Offitt, at which he is aided by partisan testimony from Maud. A sympathetic jury ignores the law to find him innocent. Sleeny wins Maud's hand in marriage, and Farnham and Alice Belding are to be united.

Background

John Hay

John Hay was born in Indiana in 1838, and spent his childhood in frontier Illinois. During his apprenticeship to become a lawyer in his uncle's office in Springfield, he came to know Abraham Lincoln, and worked for his campaign in 1860. He was made Lincoln's assistant personal secretary, and spent the years of the American Civil War working for the President, with whom he forged a close relationship.

After the war, he worked for several years in diplomatic posts abroad, then in 1870 became a writer for Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune, continuing there working for Whitelaw Reid after Greeley's death in 1872. Hay was a gifted writer for the Tribune, but also achieved success with published works. He had been Class Poet at Brown University and in 1871 published Pike County Ballads, a group of poems written in the dialect of frontier Pike County, Illinois, where Hay had attended school. The same year, he published Castilian Days, a collection of essays on Spain, some of which had been written while Hay was posted as a diplomat in Madrid.

In 1873, Hay began to woo Clara Stone, daughter of wealthy Cleveland industrialist Amasa Stone, and married her in 1874. The marriage made Hay wealthy. The Hays moved to Cleveland, where John managed Amasa Stone's investments. In December 1876, a train of Stone's Lake Shore Railway was crossing a bridge, for the design of which Stone held the patent, when the structure collapsed. The Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster, including the subsequent fire, killed 92 people, the worst rail disaster in American history to that point. Stone was widely blamed, and left Hay in charge of his businesses in mid-1877 as he went to travel in Europe.

Postwar labor troubles and literary reaction

Although the American Civil War did not itself transform the United States from an agrarian society of small towns and agriculture, it gave great impetus to a transformation already underway, especially in the North. The challenges of feeding, clothing, and equipping the Union Army, and to provide the infrastructure for the war effort, made many wealthy, and led to an industrialized America.

This transformation did not stop at Appomatox; industrial production in the United States increased by 75% from 1865 to 1873, making the U.S. second only to Britain in that regard. Railroad construction made practical the exploitation of the trans-Mississippi West. Although the railroads helped fuel an economic boom, they proved a two-edged sword in the 1870s. The 1872 Crédit Mobilier scandal, over graft in the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad, shook the Grant administration to its highest levels. Railroad bankruptcies in the Panic of 1873 led to loss of jobs, wage cuts, and business failures, and to the Railroad Strikes of 1877, when strike over wage cuts on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad spread to other lines, the Lake Shore, much to Hay's outrage. Though the Lake Shore dispute, unlike those elsewhere, was settled without violence, Hay blamed foreign agitators for the dispute,. He condemned the "unarmed rebellion of foreign workingmen, mostly Irish" and informed Stone by letter, "the very devil seems to have entered into the lower classes of working men and there are plenty of scoundrels to encourage them to all lengths." The strike was ended by federal troops sent by President Rutherford B. Hayes, but at the cost of over 100 civilian deaths.

Public opinion was generally against the strikers in the 1877 dispute, calling for armed suppression to preserve property and stability. Those events featured in many books of the period, such as Thomas Stewart Denison's An Iron Crown: A Tale of the Great Republic (1885), with novelists sympathizing with the demands of the strikers, though decrying their violence. Another labor dispute that likely affected Hay's writing of The Bread-Winners was the Cleveland Rolling Mills strike of June 1882, which occurred right before Hay first submitted his manuscript. During the dispute, union members violently attempted to prevent strikebreakers from entering. Another strike that may have affected the final form of The Bread-Winners was that against Western Union in 1883—Hay was then a director of that corporation.

The Bread-Winners is sometimes characterized as the first anti-labor novel, but it was preceded by Thomas Bailey Aldrich's The Stillwater Tragedy (1880). Aldrich had little knowledge of workers, and his work was not successful. Nevertheless, The Stillwater Tragedy was one of a very few novels to deal with labor unions at all, prior to Hay's book.

Writing

Sometime during the winter or spring of 1881–82, Hay wrote The Bread-Winners. At the time, he was spending much time writing his part of the massive Lincoln biography he was compiling with John Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln: A History. His work on the Lincoln project had been delayed by diphtheria and attendant medical treatment, and was further delayed by The Bread-Winners, as once Hay began work on his only novel, he found himself unable to put it aside. The manuscript was completed by June 1882, when he sent it to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine, though whether he was submitting it for publication or advice is unclear. Gilder called it "a powerful book", but submitted no immediate offer for it.

Aside from his family and Gilder, the only person who likely knew that Hay was writing his novel was his friend Henry Adams. In 1880, Adams had published Democracy: An American Novel, anonymously, and when Hay arrived in Britain in July 1882, he found speculation as to its authorship to be a popular pursuit. He sent Adams a copy of a cheap British edition, writing "I think of writing a novel in a hurry and printing it as by the author of Democracy."

During the summer of 1882, Hay showed the manuscript to author William Dean Howells, a friend of his. Howells urged Aldrich, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, to publish it, who agreed, sight unseen, on condition that Hay allow his name to be used as author. Hay was not willing to allow this, and resubmitted the manuscript to Gilder, who agreed to Hay's condition that it be published anonymously. In an anonymous letter published in The Century Magazine after the book was published, Hay alleged that the reason he chose to remain anonymous was that he was engaged in business where his stature would be diminished if it were known he had written a novel. According to Scott Dalrymple in his journal article on the book, the likely real reason was that if it were published under Hay's name, it would harm him politically, "To attack labor overtly, in print, would not have been politically prudent." Tyler Dennett, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, speculated that Hay, in his later career, would not have been confirmed either as ambassador to Great Britain (1897) or as Secretary of State (1898) had senators associated him with The Bread-Winners.

Although The Bread-Winners was published anonymously, Hay left clues to his identity throughout the novel. Farnham leads the library board, as did Hay's father. Hay's brother Leonard served on the frontier, like Farnham; another brother, Leonard, grew exotic flowers, as does Farnham. Algonquin Avenue, analog of Cleveland's Euclid Avenue (where Hay lived), is home to the novel's protagonist. In the opening chapter, Farnham's study is described in detail and closely resembles Hay's.

Serialization

In March 1883, the Century Company sent a postcard, with copies likely going to newspapers and potential subscribers. With the heading "Literary Note from The Century Co.", it announced that an anonymous novel, "unusual in scene and subject, and powerful in treatment", and giving some information about the plot, would soon be serialized in the pages of the Century. The serial was originally supposed to begin in April or May, but was postponed because Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel Through One Administration ran long. On July 20, the date of release of the August number, the company placed newspaper ads for The Bread-Winners, and stated that "the story ... abounds in local description and social studies, which heighten the interest and continually pique curiosity as to its authorship". The Bread-Winners appeared in the Century from August 1883 to January 1884, when it was published as a book by Harper and Brothers.Zeitz

By July 25, Cleveland newspapers were taking note of the literary mystery, with initial guesses that the author was a former Clevelander who had moved east. In early August, the New-York Tribune reported that the author was the late Leonard Case, a Cleveland industrialist and philanthropist—the manuscript had supposedly been found among his papers. Few believed the chronically-ill and introverted bachelor could have created the vivid portrait of the shapely Maud Matchlin. With Case dismissed, speculation turned to other Ohioans, including Superintendent of Schools Burke Aaron Hinsdale, former congressman Albert Gallatin Riddle (author of twelve books), and John Hay. The Boston Evening Transcript on August 18 suggested, "we have an idea that none of these guesses are correct". Others suggested that the anonymous author of Democracy (that Henry Adams had written it was not yet known) had penned a second controversial work.

The furor fueled sales; the August issue of The Century Magazine, in which the first four chapters were serialized, sold out. The September issue also sold out, but went to a second printing. The Century loudly proclaimed these facts in promotional advertisements, and that it was coining money as a result. As the second installment was read, and the character of Alice Belding became prominent, there was speculation in the press that a female hand had written the novel, with suspicion falling on Constance Fenimore Cooper (great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper), whose novels were set in eastern Ohio. On September 18, the Washington correspondent for the Transcript noted the resemblance of Farnham's study to Hay's. Other candidates for the authorship were Howells (though he quickly denied it) and Hay friend Clarence King, a writer and explorer.

On October 23, 1883, an interview with Hay, who had just returned from a trip to Colorado, appeared in the pages of the Cleveland Leader. Hay stated that such a novel would be beyond his powers, and that inaccuracies in the depiction of the local scene suggested to him that it was not written by a Clevelander. He offered no candidates who might have written it. Nevertheless, in November, the Leader ran a column speculating that Hay was the author, based on phrases used both in The Bread-Winners and in Hay's earlier book, Castilian Days, and by the fact that one character in the novel was from Salem, Indiana, Hay's birthplace. Further textual analyses led a number of newspapers in early 1884 (when the novel appeared in book form) to state it had been written by Hay.

Tiring of the guessing game, some newspapers descended to satire. The New Orleans Daily Picayune surveyed the lengthy list of candidates and announced that "the authors of The Bread Winners [sic] will all meet at Chautauqua next summer". The appearance of President Arthur's annual message to Congress in December 1883 caused the Rochester Herald to opine that he had written The Bread-Winners "because a careful comparison of his message with the story shows many words common to both". Another Upstate New York paper, the Troy Times evoked Parson Weems's tales of George Washington: "We cannot tell a lie. We wrote The Bread winners [sic] with our own little hatchet. If any one doubts it, we can show him the hatchet." This admission, the Buffalo Express felt, should put an end to the discussion.

Publication and aftermath

By the standards of the day, The Bread-Winners was a modest bestseller, with 25,000 copies sold in the United States by mid-1885. Two editions were published in Britain, a pirated edition in Canada, and there was a reported sale of 3,000 in the Australian colonies. Translations were published in French, German, and Swedish. The book did not sell as well as the leading bestsellers of the day—Mark Twain considered anything he wrote that sold less than 50,000 copies not worth publishing—but Democracy sold only 14,000 copies in the U.S., and took four years to do it. Nevertheless, The Bread-Winner did not compare with the leading bestsellers of the 1880s, that included Lew Wallace's Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), selling 290,000 by 1888, and Edward Bellamy's tale of the future, Looking Backward (1887), that sold nearly 1,000,000 copies in its first decade.

John Hay never acknowledged the book, nor was it attributed to him in his lifetime; as Gilder put it, "guessing right isn't finding out". At his death in 1905, obituarists were uncertain whether to assign the novel to him, an exception being The New York Times, which used handwriting analysis to link the book to him, and published it in its entirety over six Sundays later that year. In 1907, with the permission of Clara Hay, the book was officially acknowledged as his, and in 1916 it was republished with Hay's name, with an introduction by his son, Clarence.

Reaction

Critical

The Bread-Winners received some favorable reviews, such as that by G. P. Lathrop in Atlantic Monthly in May 1884. Lathrop applauded the author's portrayal of the characters, and suggested that Maud Matchlin was a notable addition to the "gallery of national types" in American literature. The Century reviewed the book the same month, in an article written by Howells, though he signed it only "W". He saw Maud as "the great discovery of the book" and applauded it as a treatment of an area of American life not previously written about. Similarly, a reviewer for Harper's Magazine liked the parts of the novel set among the lower classes.

According to David E. E. Sloane, "most American critics found it harder to overlook the coarseness of the book and its treatment of the labor problem." A reviewer for Literary World in January 1884 called The Bread-Winners a "greasy, slangy, malodorous book ... repulsive from the very first step". The Dial, the following month, while praising the author's use of language, deemed the book "a preposterous tissue of incidents" populated by two sets of "exaggerated types", one vicious, the other absurd. Continent, also in February 1884, suggested that "he criticisms as a whole are severe, and justly so, the book being, with all its brilliancy, faithless and hopeless." A letter in The Century Magazine deemed the novel "a piece of snobbishness imported from England ... It is simply untruthful ... to continue the assertion that trade unions are mainly controlled and strikes originated by agitators, interested only for what they make out of them".

British critics were generally more favorable toward the book than were American ones. In a column in the Pall Mall Gazette, The Bread-Winners was seen as "eminently clever and readable, a worthy contribution to that American novel-literature which is at the present day, on the whole, ahead of our own," a statement which Harper's used in advertisements. A reviewer for London's Saturday Review described the book as "one of the strongest and most striking stories of the last ten years".

Imitations

Hay's book prompted a number of imitative or satirical works. Of these, the most successful was The Money-Makers (1885), by Henry Francis Keenan, a former colleague of Hay's at the New-York Tribune. Keenan's work left little doubt that he had fixed on Hay as author of The Bread-Winners, as it contains characters clearly evoking Hay, his family, and associates. Aaron Grimestone parallels Amasa Stone, Hay's father-in-law. When the Academy Opera House collapses, taking hundreds of lives, Grimestone is deemed responsible for its faulty construction—as Stone was for the deaths in the Ashtabula railway disaster. Grimestone eventually commits suicide, as did Stone in 1883. His daughter Eleanor parallels Clara Stone Hay, and Keenan's descriptions of Eleanor make it clear she is, like Clara, heavyset. The character Archie Hilliard is modeled after Hay: Hilliard was a secretary to a high official in Washington, and later a diplomat and editor, entering journalism in the same year as Hay.

When Hay received a copy of The Money-Makers, according to later accounts, he is said to have hurried to New York to buy up as many copies as he could. Later that year, a laudatory biographical sketch of Stone, written by "J.H." appeared in the Magazine of Western History, attributing Stone's suicide to insomnia. According to Clifford A. Bender in his journal article on the Keenan book, "the principal reason The Money-Makers has remained in obscurity seems to be that John Hay suppressed it," and though he deemed it superior to The Bread-Winners, historian Scott Dalrymple suggested that Keenan's book "seems more the product of a personal vendetta than an ideological disagreement".

Themes

Labor

Dalrymple, in his journal article on The Bread-Winners, argued, "the brunt of Hay's ire seems aimed less toward these working men themselves than toward troublesome union organizers. Left to their own devices, Hay believes, most laborers are reasonable creatures". Hay biographers Howard L. Kushner and Anne H. Sherrill agree, writing that Hay was attempting "to expose the way in which this class, due to its ignorance, fell prey to the villainies of false social reformers". To Hay, unions were dangerous as they may manipulate the uneducated worker; better that laborers work out their pay and conditions individually with their employer, as Sleeny does with Matchin. Jaher noted that Offitt, a self-described reformer, "is arrogant, tyrannical and self-righteous. Hay's message is clear: the established system needs no basic change; eliminate the agitator and harmony returns."

Offitt, at birth, was given the name Andrew Jackson; which according to Hay shows that the bearer "is the son of illiterate parents, with no family pride or affections, but filled with a bitter and savage partisanship which found its expression in a servile worship of the most injurious personality in American history" Hay despised President Jackson and Jacksonian democracy, which he deemed corrupt and responsible for the continuation of the slave system that Hay saw overthrown at huge cost in the American Civil War. Hay feared a return to values he deemed anticapitalist, and made the Bread-winners, "the laziest and most incapable workmen in town", whose ideals are pre-industrialist and foreign in origin. Hay saw no excuse for violence; as the will of the people could be expressed through the ballot, the remedy for any grievances was the next election.

Jaher noted that Hay's view of what a worker should be is summed up in the character of Saul Matchin. Although a successful craftsman, he remains within the working class, not seeking to rise above his station, and is content with his lot. His children are not willing to remain within that class, however: the sons run away and the daughters seek to marry well, symbolizing the change being wrought by industrialization. Robert Dunne pointed out that the working classes are not depicted favorably in Hay's novel, but as "stupid and ill-bred, at the best loyal servants to the gentry and at the worst overly ambitious and a threat to the welfare of Buffland".

Class

Farnham and Alice Belding are the two characters in the novel who were never part of the working class, but who are scions of wealth. Other members of the elite are more vulgar: Mrs. Belding's indulgence in gossip endangers the budding romance between her daughter and Farnham, while Mr. Temple, though brave and steadfast, can only discuss a few topics, such as horse racing, and his speech is peppered with profanities. The rest of Buffland's society, as displayed at a party at Temple's house, is composed of "a group of gossipy matrons, vacuous town belles, and silly swains".

Historical view

According to Dalrymple, ",the anti-labor novels fail to hold up particularly well. None is a masterpiece of language, plotting, or characterization. Ideologically all seem quite heavy-handed, choosing to make their points with a nearly complete lack of subtlety.

References

  1. ^ Hay, John (1883). "The Bread-winners". Harper & Brothers. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  2. Jaher, Frederic (1972). "Industrialism and the American Aristocrat: A Study of John Hay and His Novel, The Bread-Winners". University of Illinois Press. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
  3. Hart, James David. The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste, p. 99, 309 (1950)
  4. Zeitz, pp. 203–05.
  5. Zeitz, p. 211.
  6. Zeitz, pp. 222–23.
  7. Zeitz, pp. 214–15.
  8. Zeitz, p. 216.
  9. Jaher, p. 71.
  10. Taliaferro, pp. 173–74.
  11. Zeitz, p. 223.
  12. Dalrymple, p. 133.
  13. Jaher, p. 72–73.
  14. Taliaferro, p. 219.
  15. ^ Kushner & Sherrill, p. 54.
  16. Gale, p. 87.
  17. Vandersee, p. 253.
  18. Taliaferro, p. 213.
  19. Taliaferro, p. 214.
  20. Taliaferro, p. 215.
  21. Dalyrmple, p. 136. sfn error: no target: CITEREFDalyrmple (help)
  22. Vandersee, p. 245.
  23. Taliaferro, pp. 217–18.
  24. ^ Vandersee, p. 246.
  25. Sloane 1971, p. 260 n.13. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSloane_1971 (help)
  26. Vandersee, pp. 247–48.
  27. Vandersee, p. 248.
  28. Vandersee, pp. 248–51.
  29. Vandersee, pp. 255–58.
  30. Vandersee, pp. 255–56.
  31. ^ Vandersee, p. 259.
  32. Vandersee, pp. 267–68.
  33. Vandersee, p. 268.
  34. Vandersee, pp. 268–69.
  35. Vandersee, p. 269.
  36. ^ Sloane 1970, p. 180.
  37. Sloane 1970, pp. 180–81.
  38. ^ Sloane 1970, p. 179.
  39. Kushner & Sherrill, p. 55.
  40. Sloane 1970, p. 178.
  41. Zeitz, p. 225.
  42. ^ Bender, p. 320.
  43. Dalrymple, pp. 137–38.
  44. Bender, pp. 319–20.
  45. Dalrymple, p. 138.
  46. Dalrymple, p. 136.
  47. ^ Dunne, p. 31.
  48. Jaher, p. 85.
  49. Hay, pp. 89–90.
  50. Kushner & Sherrill, pp. 54–55.
  51. Jaher, p. 86.
  52. ] Jaher, pp. 90�–91.
  53. Dalrymple, p. 141.

Notes

  1. He is rechristened "Ananias" as a small boy after stealing money from his father. See Hay, p. 90.

Bibliography

Books
  • Gale, Robert L. (1978). John Hay. Twayne's American Authors. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7199-9.
  • Hay, John (1883). The Bread-Winners: A Social Study. New York: Harper & Brothers.
  • Kushner, Howard I.; Sherrill, Anne Hummel (1977). John Milton Hay: The Union of Poetry and Politics. Twayne's World Leaders. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7719-9.
  • Taliaferro, John (2013). All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, From Lincoln to Roosevelt (Kindle ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-9741-4.
  • Zeitz, Joshua (2014). Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln's Image (Kindle ed.). New York: Viking Penguin. ISBN 978-1-101-63807-1.
Journals and other sources
  • Bender, Clifford A. (May, 1926). "Another Forgotten Novel". Modern Language Notes. 41 (5): 319–322. JSTOR . 2914050 . {{cite journal}}: Check |jstor= value (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)(subscription required)
  • Dalrymple, Scott (Fall 1999). "John Hay's Revenge: Anti-labor novels, 1880–1905" (PDF). Business and Economic History. 28 (1): 133–42.
  • Davis, Harold E. (December 1941). "The Citizenship of John Perdicaris". The Journal of Modern History. 13 (4): 517–526. JSTOR 1874246.(subscription required)
  • Dunne, Robert (Spring 1996). "Dueling Ideologies of America in The Bread-Winner and The Money-Makers". American Literary Realism, 1870-1910. 28 (3): 30–37. JSTOR 27746664.(subscription required)
  • Friedlaender, Marc (1969). "Henry Hobson Richardson, Henry Adams, and John Hay". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series. 81: 137–66. JSTOR 25080672.(subscription required)
  • Howells, William Dean (September 1905). "John Hay in Literature". The North American Review. 181 (586): 343–51. JSTOR 25105451.(subscription required) .
  • Isaac, Larry (December 2009). "Movements, Aesthetics, and Markets in Literary Change: Making the American Labor Problem Novel". American Sociological Review. 74 (6): 938–65. JSTOR 27801502.(subscription required)
  • Jaher, Frederic Cople (Spring 1972). "Industrialism and the American Aristocrat: A Social Study of John Hay and His Novel, the Bread-Winners". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 65 (1): 69–93. JSTOR 40190942.(subscription required)
  • Kushner, Howard I. (September 1974). "'The Strong God Circumstance': The Political Career of John Hay". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 67 (4): 352–84. JSTOR 40191317.(subscription required)
  • Monteiro, George (February 1976). "John Hay and the Union Generals". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 69 (1): 46–66. JSTOR 40191692.(subscription required)
  • Sloane, David E. E. (Fall 1969). "John Hay's The Bread-Winners as Literary Realism". American Literary Realism, 1870-1910. 2 (3): 276–79. JSTOR 27747664.(subscription required)
  • Sloane, David E. E. (Spring 1970). "John Hay (1838-1905)". American Literary Realism, 1870-1910. 3 (2): 178–88. JSTOR 27747706.(subscription required)
  • Vandersee, Charles (Summer, 1974). "The Great Literary Mystery of the Gilded Age". American Literary Realism, 1870-1910. 7 (3). JSTOR 27747927. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)(subscription required) .
  • Woolman, David (October 1997). "Did Theodore Roosevelt Overreact When an American was Kidnapped in Morocco? Were Seven Warships Really Necessary?". Military History. 14 (4).
  • Stevenson Jr., Randehl; Stevenson (Spring–Summer 2006). "John Milton Hay's Literary Influence". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 99 (1): 19–27. JSTOR 40193908.(subscription required)
  • Zeitz, Joshua (February 2014). "Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay and the War For Lincoln's Image". Smithsonian. 44 (10).

External links

Full text at Project Gutenberg

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