Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty (32 page)

In Paris, a reporter found him musing about American greed. He referred to the canvases that he had shown at the Philadelphia Exposition titled
Old California
and
New California
. The former showed a man and woman digging for gold, scorching the earth with their pursuits.

“You have no idea how they treat the poor earth in this hunt for gold,” Bartholdi told the reporter as he resumed his work. “How they destroy stately trees, turn babbling brooks from their course, and convert green fields into a desert. It is the only unpleasant recollection I have of my otherwise agreeable travels in California.” Perhaps he still harbored the sentiment he had felt when he first went to America in 1871: that the nation cared more about money than anything else.

Bartholdi had arrived home to find that the Lafayette committee had gone out of its way to give the other artists in the competition more time, extending their deadlines by as much as six months. “What this Committee is doing would be called in France not only indelicacy, but still disloyalty,” Bartholdi wrote to Butler.

“I am sorry for the lost time, the work, and the devotion which I have spent in this project. I am sorry to feel one so badly treated by
Americans!
. . . I shall do well in the future to not believe so much in any enthusiastic feelings, and to beware of American contracts. By that way, I may better save the feelings of ideal America which I have had.

“I could not help Dear Friend to write to you about that, because I felt deeply wounded by these proceedings.

“I consider all this affair of Lafayette as finished and remain disgusted,” he said, then touchingly added, “but if you hear something, or get any information which might attenuate my disgust and the sad opinion which all these things inspire in me, I would be very glad to hear of it, only on account of my ideas about Americans!

“Meanwhile it was for me a relief to empty my heart in yours.”

On March 11, 1886, Henry F. Spaulding, the treasurer of the American Committee, had written to Butler that its fundraising circular had received only one donation of three hundred dollars. “It seems to have fallen dead. I am at the end of my tether—and wits end.”

Stone tried to bring Bartholdi’s attention to the fundraising difficulties by letter. According to the plan to which they had agreed, the statue was meant to be completed and inaugurated by July, just four months away. Unfortunately, with the committee’s money troubles, not even the pedestal was complete.

On April 2, 1886, Bartholdi responded to Butler about Stone’s concerns. Demonstrating his entrepreneurial acumen yet again, he rattled off several ideas, including taking out a mortgage and charging visitors twenty-five cents on weekdays and ten cents on Sundays to pay off the money. He noted the success of such a scheme in France. “We made in about four months more than 61,000 francs [or over $12,000] clear profit,” Bartholdi proudly wrote.

“Afterwards, if you think it necessary, you might keep up a slight entrance fee for the preservation of the monument.”

Bartholdi also offered to visit the United States to present slide shows for the richest potential donors, going downward from tier to tier of contribution level, with all donations itemized in the
World.

He cautioned that the committee should not let the statue stand too long without inaugurating it. “I believe it necessary because if we leave the statue standing a long time in sight without presentation, it loses all interest for the public. On the other hand the Fall is the season where we have the people in the City, or close of it, and the weather is more pleasant than in summer.”

On April 22, 1886, the last stone was laid on the pedestal. The
World
had paid the bill from November 1884. That would have been a moment of absolute rejoicing, but now money was needed to erect the statue. The committee did not seem inclined to go further into debt. The state government had refused and the federal government had taken no action, either.

On April 27, 1886, Drexel wrote a letter to the State Department outlining the statue’s history—including its invention by “the eminent French artist, M. Félix [
sic
] Bartholdi.” He talked of how the expenses had been higher than expected because of the slowness with which donations had come in, “necessitating delays of labor.”

On May 11, President Cleveland reminded Congress of the 1877 resolution to provide for the Liberty statue’s inaugural. Now was the time for Congress to cough up monies necessary to get the statue in place, he said. He noted that if the American Committee hoped to hold the inaugural ceremony on September 3, it had better hurry to provide funds.

The actual expenses, as put together by Henry Spaulding, followed. The memo noted how the original estimate of $250,000 had risen by more than one fourth. They had received about $323,000 in donations.

Stone was requiring an additional salary of $12,500 for now overseeing the erection of the statue, which was odd, given that the newspapers earlier had reported that his services after January 1 were being offered gratis. The committee was $15,000 in debt. It wanted relief from that, as well as the money to continue the work.

Out on the island, Charles O. Long, the overseer of construction of the statue, surveyed the 220 crates that had been unloaded from the
Isère
and stored in a shed between the wharf and the pedestal. He needed to put each of Eiffel’s monster beams in place.

Workmen started hauling parts from the shed and lining them up, waiting their turn. When Long pulled one up and looked for the labeling, he discovered many had been mismarked or the identifying number rubbed off. A steel beam would be hoisted two hundred feet in the air, where it was to be riveted, and then, as it swung overhead and into place, a worker would discover it was not the correct beam. It would then slowly be lowered all the way to the ground.

Sometimes Long’s men had to try twenty different pieces to get the right one. As they clambered to the top, the work got slower and slower, since fewer men could be used and the Americans were employing no exterior scaffolding. Even the French considered such acrobatics extraordinary.

On July 12, Stone held another ceremony, this time for the riveting of the first copper plates. The first rivets were etched with the names of the main players—from Bartholdi to Pulitzer to the
World
cartoonist McDougall to Reavis. Before the day ended, a reporter exclaimed whimsically that while he could see Liberty’s bones, “why can’t we feel her pulse?”

Long must have been slightly puzzled by the fanciful question, but he replied, “You can if you have the nerve.” He indicated the top of Liberty, more than three hundred feet above the ground, and said, “The view will repay you.”

So the reporter and the newspaper’s illustrator set off. Narrow iron ladders, the size of fire escapes, had been built within the framework, rising up as high as the torch. The ironwork was uncovered, awaiting the copper sheathing; the beams were “so far apart that for part of the way there is nothing on either side of you but the blue ether. A sailor might enjoy it, but a more ticklish journey for unsophisticated landsmen could not be devised.”

Despite this daunting prospect, the reporter and the illustrator decided to be the first civilians to rise over New York and experience the new, never-before-seen view.

“The passing clouds appeared to be still, but the arm moved by some mysterious power, and the reporter’s head swam. The wind, quite light on the ground, was blowing a gale in this mid-air perch, and it was all he could do to cling to the spiderweb ladder for dear life. As soon as he recovered his equilibrium, he determined to descend. He looked downward, and the earth seemed further than the sky. The rounds of the ladders had disappeared and there seemed to be nothing by which to descend but the iron beams of the framework. The swaying of the treetops beneath unnerved him as much as the sweeping movement of the long arm above. He knew he should soon fall if he stopped still, and, as misery loves company, he made up his mind that he would ascend rather than descend, so he kept on. Just as he got to the forearm a triumphant shout reached his ears. The artist had both his hands clasped on Liberty’s wrist and was ‘feeling her pulse.’ He was the first that ever burst into that dizzy spot except the workmen. No such glorious view of New York bay was ever obtained before. The air was clear and there was no limit upon the human sight except human frailty. Great ships looked like sloops, schooners like sailboats, men like moving sticks. Even the Brooklyn Bridge seemed a thing of the earth’s surface, which could be touched with the hand by any one sailing under it. Luckily, Liberty’s pulse beat firmly and equably, and the descent to earth was made as safely as it was gladly.”

Stories like that encouraged curiosity seekers to board the ferryboat to Bedloe’s Island with greater regularity. New vessels had shortened the time of the journey to only eight minutes. Master Workman Bouquet from Gaget’s studio directed his men, pushing them to get ready for the September 3 ceremony, at which President Cleveland, it was said, would officiate.

The statue kept taking form but with continuing problems. In the journey from France to New York, and the hot summer and harsh winter they had spent on Bedloe, the copper sheets had melted out of shape. Workers had to re-form many of them.

When the arm and head went up, they were installed off center, it would later be discovered, by nearly eighteen inches. That caused an imbalance in the arm that would prove a problem for years to come until it could be repaired.

A visiting reporter noticed that the arm “swayed quite perceptibly in the slight wind that was blowing.” He questioned a workman putting finishing touches to the torch, asking if it had been difficult to follow the French instructions. The worker replied that it was and the French had sent “a couple of frog ’aters across to show us how the stachow wint together, but we soon found we knew a dom site more about it than they did, so they wint home. We got one three-square sheet of copper left over, though, and none of us can tell where it goes.” This worker predicted the arm would come off in a tornado.

The construction faced obstacles, but funding moved along. Six days after D. H. King Jr. drove the first rivet into the copper in the name of Bartholdi, prospects for government aid brightened in Washington, D.C. Perry Belmont, son of August Belmont and chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, had devised a way to slip the necessary request for monies into the congressional proceedings. He presented a report declaring that the honor of the United States itself was at stake in making suitable provision for the dedication of the statue and for its subsequent maintenance.

The House adopted the report and instructed the Committee on Appropriations to add an amendment to the Sundry Civil bill for this purpose. The Senate had already pledged in advance that it would tack the allocation of monies for Liberty onto the bill.

Bartholdi interpreted the deal as done, and wrote jubilantly on June 25, “I have heard with great pleasure of the appropriation of $100,000 voted by Congress.” He felt the time had come to invite the French delegation for the inaugural, and to pay for the French press to come.

On July 1, the House considered the Liberty matter. Flanking the white marble rostrum were the portrait of Washington and the one of Lafayette by Ary Scheffer, Bartholdi’s former art instructor. The 333 little desks (eight of those for delegates), resembling elegant school desks, lining the white marble floor served not only as the representatives’ assigned positions in the Hall, but as their offices for all matters. For example, a lumber magnate might be pitching his cause to a cluster of representatives; a half dozen of these harangues could be going on at any one time. The chaos echoing to the glass-paned ceiling before a session began could be overwhelming. High-volume debates raged until order was called.

Samuel Randall, former speaker of the House, from Pennsylvania, stood to read the bill’s instruction, then the Bartholdi statue request: monies to pay the debt; the construction of platforms for the ceremonies; entertainment for French guests; cost for clearing the grounds, repairing the wharf, and installing an elevator and electric light plant to make the statue into a lighthouse, as required. All totaled: $47,000.

Stone had composed his own plea for funds, presented by Abram Hewitt, former head of the Democratic National Committee from New York and an iron magnate. At the Brooklyn Bridge’s opening five years earlier, flinty Hewitt had given a famous speech closing with these words: “At the ocean gateway of such a nation, well may stand the stately figure of ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’; and, in hope and faith, as well as gratitude, we write upon the towers of our beautiful bridge, to be illuminated by [Liberty’s] electric ray, the words of exultation:
Finis coronat opus
.” (The end crowns the work.)

Stone’s wish list included over $3,000 more for the platform funding and a $2,500 refreshment budget for five hundred guests. Stone had increased the budget for grading and clearing by $2,000, requested a new concrete wharf at $16,000 as opposed to repairing the wood one, added $1,500 more for the electric plant, and set the cost of connecting arches at $26,400.

Richard Bland of Missouri, a Democrat, immediately objected to both amendments. “I believe there is no law authorizing such an appropriation,” he stated.