How Crowdfunding Saved Lady Liberty
It was the sizzling summer of 1885 and the Statue of Liberty had arrived in New York, deconstructed into 350 individual pieces, patiently waiting to be assembled. Yes, the history books you skimmed in social studies were right, the statue was a gracious gift to the US from France. However, this beautiful copper monument was missing one essential element: a pedestal.
8 years before the statue’s arrival, the American Committee of the Statue of Liberty was formed to raise funds for the pedestal. Even after years of campaigning, they fell short. The land of opportunity was struggling to raise a total of $250,000 for the granite plinth to uphold lady liberty—around $7.6 million at today’s prices.
Grover Cleveland, the Governor of New York at the time, rejected the use of any city funds to pay for it, and the US Congress couldn’t agree on a funding package. America stood still in a predicament. Baltimore, Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia offered to pay for the pedestal in delight—only in return for the relocation of the statue. Can you imagine if the Statue of Liberty resided anywhere else but the Big Apple?
New York was running out of options and citizens were anxiously waiting to see the French sculptor Bathroldi’s work of art, elevated for all to see. Here’s where things took a turn for the better: Joseph Pulitzer, a renowned publisher, made the daring decision to launch a fundraising campaign on the front page of his newspaper, the New York World, on March 16th, 1885:
“We must raise the money! The World is the people's paper, and now it appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money. The $250,000 that the making of the Statue cost was paid in by the masses of the French people—by the working men, the tradesmen, the shop girls, the artisans—by all, irrespective of class or condition. Let us respond in like manner. Let us not wait for the millionaires to give us this money. It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America.”
Pulitzer’s newspaper kept citizens up-to-speed by regularly listing the names of donors and their contribution amounts on the front page. Similar to some modern crowdfunding campaigns, the World offered rewards to donors—those who donated a minimum of a dollar were given a 6-inch replica of the statue; donors of five dollars or more received a 12-inch replica. And for the grand finale: the largest donor of all received gold coins.
Pulitzer’s campaign raised a little over $100,000 in five months, with a majority of donors contributing a dollar or less—which was just enough funding to construct lady liberty’s pedestal.
Collective fundraising projects have existed for thousands of years, but the Statue of Liberty campaign was unique due to how quickly the money was raised, the large number of small donors, and the fact that it was all conducted through one source: the newspaper. This could be considered America’s first-ever crowdfunding campaign, making the World the first crowdfunding platform. Prominent New Yorkers in Pulitzer’s time even acknowledged the potential of his model.
More than a hundred years later, the internet has turned crowdfunding into a $1.13B-a-year industry. It’s uncertain where the Statue of Liberty would be today without Pulitzer’s leap of faith, but one thing is certain: His crowdfunding model elevated the most monumental gift in American history.
