The Statue of Liberty Crowdfunding Hustle

We remember the Statue of Liberty as a gift from France. The reality was a decade-long scramble for money on both sides of the Atlantic. In France, ordinary citizens paid for the statue through banquets, concerts, and a national lottery. In America, nobody wanted to pay for the pedestal. Congress wouldn't help, New York's governor vetoed state funds, and the statue's arm spent years as a tourist attraction charging admission. In this episode, we tell the story of the 19th-century crowdfunding hustle — and how Joseph Pulitzer, his newspaper, and more than a hundred thousand small donors finally got Lady Liberty off the ground.

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