Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [132]
Cleveland didn’t share Pulitzer’s fervor, and was uninterested in satisfying the party’s hunger for patronage jobs after twenty-four years of exile. Even worse, the president ignored Pulitzer’s choices. In particular, Pulitzer wanted his friend Charles Gibson of St. Louis appointed to the minister’s post in Berlin and met with Cleveland to urge this selection. Gibson himself came to Washington, armed with an endorsement from the Post-Dispatch and a privately printed pamphlet. It was all for naught. In late March, Cleveland appointed someone else to the Berlin post.
Pulitzer the reformer turned into a rejected spoils seeker. Cleveland had hardly finished taking the oath of office when it became clear that a fight was brewing between the two men.
Frustrated with President Cleveland, Pulitzer turned his attention to a struggling effort to erect a prominent symbol of American immigration in New York. The French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s statue of Liberty Enlightening the World was collecting dust in crates in France because Americans had not yet raised the money necessary to build its pedestal on Bedloe Island in the middle of New York’s harbor.
Seven years earlier, in 1878, Pulitzer had been among those who had seen the head of the statue at the Paris Exposition. Since moving to New York in 1883, he had provided editorial support to the undertaking. His own experience of immigration and his devotion to American liberty made the project immensely appealing to Pulitzer. In fact, within two weeks of taking over the World, he had replaced the printing press at the center of the two globes on the masthead with a figure of Liberty, her hand holding the torch aloft.
All that remained to complete the project was to build an 89-foot granite pedestal to support the 151-foot, 225-ton sculpture. But the American fund-raising efforts had been anemic, especially in comparison with the French effort, which had raised more than $750,000. After years of solicitation, the American committee remained $100,000 short of the $250,000 needed for the work. Congress refused to help, other cities complained about New York’s being chosen for the statue, and most newspaper editors considered the project too costly. It seemed destined for failure.
But Pulitzer was not going to give up on Lady Liberty. Even in the midst of the tumultuous 1884 election, he had taken time to support the work of the American committee. “Unless the statue goes to the bottom of the ocean,” wrote Pulitzer, “it is safe to predict that it will eventually stand upon an American pedestal, and then be referred to for a very long time with more sentiment than we can now dream of.”
The scattered editorials in the World had little effect. By spring of 1885, as the French prepared to ship the statue, only the concrete base had been poured. Pulitzer was indignant. “What a burning disgrace it will be to the United States,” he wrote, “if the statue of the goddess is brought to our shores on a French government vessel and is met by the intelligence that our people, with all their wealth, have not enough public spirit, liberality and pride to provide a fitting pedestal on which it can be placed!” But his chastisement, published on a Saturday, stirred no one. The other newspapers, especially the Herald, continued to treat the project with puzzlement and disdain.
The following Monday, however, few could any longer feign ignorance of the Statue of Liberty’s plight: Pulitzer made it the front-page story in his paper, now selling 150,000 or more copies a day. Under the banner headline WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE GREAT BARTHOLDI STATUE? the World put America’s failure to raise the needed funds on display, complete with illustrations of the stalled pedestal construction.
“There is but one thing that can be done,” Pulitzer railed from his editorial page. “We must raise the money!” He backed his call with a specific plan. “The World is the people paper, and it now appeals to the people to come