Although horrified by labor violence and an advocate of repression, Hayes thought “excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice and wretchedness as the lot of the many.” He framed the problem as how “to rid our country of the conflict between wealth and poverty without destroying either society or civilization, or liberty and free government.” Excessive wealth was “the evil” to be eradicated. Neither Cleveland nor Hayes was being duplicitous.
