The Bread-Winners is an 1883 anti-labor novel by John Hay, who was Assistant Secretary to the President under Abraham Lincoln and McKinley's final Secretary of State. Originally published anonymously in installments in The Century Magazine, the book attracted wide interest and provoked considerable speculation over the author'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 wealthy 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 Hay's hostile view of organized labor was soon seen as outdated, and the book is best remembered for its onetime popularity and controversial nature.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bread-Winners

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

794:

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia was beheaded on the order of King Offa of Mercia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelberht_II_of_East_Anglia

1609:

Thomas Thorpe published the first copies of Shakespeare's sonnets (title page pictured), possibly without William Shakespeare's consent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_sonnets

1875:

Representatives from seventeen countries signed the Metre Convention which set up an institute for the purpose of coordinating international metrology and for coordinating the development of the metric system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre_Convention

1996:

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws in Colorado that would have prevented any jurisdiction in the state from taking any governmental action to protect homosexual citizens from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romer_v._Evans

2012:

The first of two major earthquakes struck Northern Italy, resulting in seven deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Northern_Italy_earthquakes

More anniversaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Northern_Italy_earthquakes

May 19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Northern_Italy_earthquakes

May 20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_20

May 21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_20

Archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Selected_anniversaries/May

By email https://en.wikipedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l

List of historical anniversaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_anniversaries

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

much of a muchness: (idiomatic) Of two or more things, having little difference of any significance between them. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/much_of_a_muchness

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.   --John Stuart Mill https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill