Rutherford B. Hayes Inaugural Address - 03/05/1877 - Read by Yuvraj Singh

My Fellow Americans: The Inaugural Addresses of the U.S. Presidents

Rutherford B. Hayes delivered his inaugural address on March 5th, 1877. Read by Yuvraj Singh. The Election of 1876 was only the 2nd time that a president had lost the popular vote but won the electoral; it is the first of four where a Republican had lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college. He had pledged not to run for a 2nd term and stuck with his promise; he used his time in government to reform the civil service restore faith in government. His presidency was during the Gilded Age, when wealth disparity was widespread. He noted this after his presidency.

> “[I]t is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many…. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy and it will be found…. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property.”

The cover art is an 1884 portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes by Daniel Huntington.

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