[Wordly L6] 1. Lady Liberty - Yujun

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Lady Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of freedom to people all over theworld. Since 1886 it has welcomed immigrants who sail into New York harbor to begin a new life in the United States. Like many of them, Lady Liberty, as the statue is affectionately known, had to overcome some difficulties before reaching these shores.

The statue was a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States. It was given in honor of the friendship between the two countries and the one-hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution. But before the statue could be put in place, the people of the United States had to provide a pedestal for it at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars. That turned out to be no easy task. A fund-raising drive was launched and ran into immediate difficulties. Newspapers across the United States ridiculed the effort. They argued that because the French were sending over the statue, they should be the ones to pay the extra costs involved for the base.

Despite this opposition, the effort to raise the money continued. A forty- foot-high section of the right arm, with the hand clasping the torch of liberty, was sent to the United States. It was displayed at the 1876 Philadelphia exhibition marking the one-hundredth birthday of the United States. Visitors paid fifty cents to climb onto the balcony surrounding the torch. Many other fund-raising events were also held. But even after several years, contributions fell far short of the total needed. The future of the entire project seemed in doubt. Not until a newspaper appeal promised to print donors’ names was the necessary money raised.

With the success of the project assured, the rest of the statue was finally shipped from France. It arrived in pieces packed in over two hundred wooden crates. The work of assembling it proceeded without further delay. A public holiday was declared on October 28, 1886, when the Statue of Liberty was
at last unveiled. It was one of the largest gatherings ever in New York City. The island where the statue stands is called Liberty Island. It is reached by a short ferry ride from lower Manhattan. At just over 305 feet, the statue was the tallest structure in New York City. Though it is now dwarfed by the lofty skyscrapers of Manhattan, at the time it was the most conspicuous landmark in the city.

In the 1880s, people seeking a better life were flooding into the United States. They arrived at the rate of one million a year. Many of them came from Russia and Eastern Europe; they had been cruelly persecuted by their governments and were fleeing to safety. Others were escaping the poverty of their native lands in search of a more prosperous life in America.

The museum at the base of the statue contains a bronze tablet placed there in 1903. On it is a poem written twenty years earlier by Emma Lazarus, whose own family had fled Russia. The poem has captured the imagination of the American people and has become forever associated with the Statue of Liberty. It ends with these eloquent lines:

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!