Let us not wait for the millionaires to give us this money.
March 3, 2015 7:05 AM   Subscribe

The Statue of Liberty is a shining symbol of Franco-American amity, but the story of its pedestal is a tribute to the immigrants, workers, and children who raised and donated money to build it. 1n 1885 - 120, 000 of them donated more than $100,000 to build the pedestal for the statue - at that time sitting in parts in boxes on the island where it would eventually stand.

Joseph Pulitzer, and his newspaper, The World jump-started the effort (which benefited both the Statue and the paper), casting it as a patriotic act and as a movement of the People not the elite, and managed to raise the money in 6 months. Pulitzer's efforts are popularly described today as the “first example of crowdfunding” (the link has newspaper ads and articles from The World in addition to analysis of fundraising) and came after years and years of fruitless fundraising (including placing the arm and torch in Madison Square Park to passively prod the well-to-do around the park to remember the cause and donate) and failed attempts to get it funded by the state.

If this is all too dry for you, Comedy Central’s Drunk History retold Pulitzer’s part in the story in under 3 minutes.
posted by julen (16 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
A fictionalized version of this is one of the plotlines of Sam Fuller's Park Row.
posted by brujita at 7:35 AM on March 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


I remember a fundraising effort in 1983ish for the restoration that began in 1984. My elementary was involved in raising funds, and I sent some pennies that way. I can't find anything about the fundraising online, though, so maybe that wasn't as big a thing as it seemed to me at age 10.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:59 AM on March 3, 2015


Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus, the poem that many strongly associate with the statue:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
was originally written for a charity auction in benefit of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund, which featured the work of other authors like Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and John Burroughs.
The auction raised $1,500 for the pedestal, but Lazarus' poem had been largely forgotten by the time the statue was officially opened. The plaque on the statue's pedestal was added 17 years later in 1903, after a campaign led by Georgina Schuyler in memory of her friend who had died in 1887, likely of Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

Emma Lazarus & Statue of Liberty
Wikipedia: Emma Lazarus
posted by zamboni at 8:00 AM on March 3, 2015 [6 favorites]


The statue would have worked better without the pedestal. Imagine it standing at ground level, where you could walk right up to its feet.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:12 AM on March 3, 2015


The statue would have worked better without the pedestal. Imagine it standing at ground level, where you could walk right up to its feet.

For the few that actually got to go to Liberty Island, maybe.

For the "huddled masses yearning to be free" that sailed by her as they came to America, no. That pedestal makes that statue work.
posted by eriko at 8:26 AM on March 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


Given the whole sea rise thing, it's probably best they have the pedestal.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:33 AM on March 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


Just to irritate the GOP we should start a petition to have it relocated to the US - Mexico border.
posted by Daddy-O at 8:34 AM on March 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


Just to irritate the GOP we should start a petition to have it relocated to the US - Mexico border.

They'd probably agree...so long as you installed a machine-gun nest in the lantern.
posted by yoink at 8:42 AM on March 3, 2015


The owner of the newspaper in the Fuller movie is a woman.
posted by brujita at 8:49 AM on March 3, 2015


Very interesting, thanks julen!
posted by msbubbaclees at 9:24 AM on March 3, 2015


For the "huddled masses yearning to be free" that sailed by her as they came to America, no.

I see your point for visibility's sake, so let's compromise: they should have built up a hillock on the island and put the statue on top of that.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:45 AM on March 3, 2015


A fictionalized version of this is one of the plotlines of Sam Fuller's Park Row.

There's a line about that plot line I love. I'm not sure I'm quoting it exactly, but one of the newspapermen said that the proposed Statue of Liberty was not a gift from one monarch to another, but a gift from the people of one republic to another. When I watched the film, it was in the era of the early Iraq War and the 2004 Kerry campaign, at a point where there was a lot of France-bashing in the U.S. at the time. I loved that line about a gift from one republic to another, because it was just the perfect Fuck You to all those "freedom fries" pushers of that time period.
posted by jonp72 at 9:49 AM on March 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'd love to see today's Kickstarter reward tiers for this one. A ticket to the opening gala? Your name laser-inscribed on the rear of one of the bricks? And for a nickel, you can get a t-shirt with a picture of the pedestal and the text "Part of the Tired / Poor / Huddled Mass before it was cool"...
posted by cacophony at 10:45 AM on March 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


casting it as a patriotic act and as a movement of the People not the elite

If a major newspaper said this now you'd hear cries of "class warfare!" from the mouthpieces of the Kochs et al. And we'd all lower our gaze and say "yes, lord," and return to our labors that we might pay the interest on our loans.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:10 AM on March 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


For the few that actually got to go to Liberty Island, maybe.

For the "huddled masses yearning to be free" that sailed by her as they came to America, no. That pedestal makes that statue work.


I'm with eriko here. The statue may be visited, may even be climbed, but above all, it was made to be SEEN from the harbor.
posted by dhartung at 12:53 PM on March 3, 2015


This post lead me to the Statue of Liberty wikipedia page. It has a powerful image of Lady Liberty with the twin towers burning in the background. I'm not surprised that I've made it over 13 years without seeing it. I did a pretty good job for several years of embargoing myself from most 9/11 grief porn.

The Statue of Liberty promises to the world and to ourselves that we are a shining example of justice, freedom and opportunity. That's not true today. I don't know if that was ever true. I know that's what many of us wish we were; that we could live up to the promise. I don't know if we ever will. I know I don't hang the American flag on my front porch anymore.
posted by double block and bleed at 7:06 PM on March 3, 2015


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