At first glance, everything is known about the Statue of Liberty. It was given to the United States by the French for the centenary of independence. The monument, created by Frederic Bartholdi and Gustave Eiffel, was inaugurated on Liberty Island at the mouth of the Hudson River on October 28, 1886. Lady Liberty, meeting ships arriving in New York, is quite heavy. It contains 204 tons, of which 90 are copper blocks with which the figure is faced.
It is these 90 tons that have been the subject of heated debate among historians from different countries for many years. It is clear that the supplier of such a huge batch of non-ferrous metal should have made very good money - the cost of copper at that time averaged $ 2,500 per ton. But the question of who got this money is still open. No documents related to the purchase of copper have survived, and in the memoirs of the people involved in the creation of the Statue of Liberty, the topic of the origin of the metal is strangely hushed up.
A bit of historical background
The creation of the monument was entrusted to the sculptor and architect Frederic Bartholdi. A deadline was set - by 1876 it was necessary to complete the monument, timed to coincide with the centenary of the United States Declaration of Independence. It is believed to be a joint Franco-American project. Americans worked on the pedestal, and the statue itself was created in France. In New York, all parts of the Statue of Liberty were assembled into a single whole.
After the start of construction, it became clear that much more funds were needed than originally planned. On both sides of the ocean, a massive fundraising campaign, lotteries, charity concerts, and other events were initiated. In calculating the design parameters of the huge statue of Bartholdi, the help of an experienced engineer was required. Alexander Gustave Eiffel, the creator of the Eiffel Tower, personally designed a strong iron support and frame that allows the statue's copper shell to move freely while maintaining the balance of the monument itself.
The Americans were reluctant to part with the funds, because there were difficulties in collecting the required amount, so Joseph Pulitzer wrote a number of articles on the pages of his newspaper "World", appealing to representatives of the upper and middle classes and urging them to allocate money for a good cause. The criticism was extremely harsh, and it had an effect
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By August 1885, the USA managed to collect the required amount, by that time the French had already completed their part of the work and brought parts of the statue to New York. The Statue of Liberty was divided into 350 pieces and transported on the frigate Ysere in 214 crates. In 4 months, all parts of the monument were collected, and with a huge gathering of peoples, on October 26, 1886, the opening ceremony of the legendary monument took place. It so happened that the gift for the 100th anniversary was 10 years late. It is worth noting that the hand with the torch was collected even earlier and was even exhibited at an exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Let's get back to the material now
They tried to solve the riddle by comparing the cladding material with samples taken from the largest mines in the world. The experiment made even more confusion, the versions grew like mushrooms after rain. Copper samples, similar in composition of impurities, were found in English mines in Swansea, in German Mansfield and in the Spanish mining region of Uelva. Norwegian scientists have little doubt that Bartholdi bought 90 tons of copper from the Visnes mine, which was developed in the 1870s on the island of Karma in the North Sea. At the same time, the company that owns this mine was run by a Frenchman, and its headquarters were located in Paris. The Norwegians so wanted to consider themselves "suppliers of building materials for the American" Svoboda "that they ordered a spectrographic analysis from Bell Laboratories. His results showedthat the copper from the North Sea is very similar to the one that the statue is faced with, but not identical. And this gives a chance to develop another theory about the origin of metal - this time Russian.
Nizhniy Tagil, Copper mine. Fox Mountain.
From the Urals to Paris
Bashkir scientist, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences Miniakhmet Mutalov and employees of the Vysokogorsk mining and processing plant do not doubt that copper for Lady Svoboda was purchased from the industrialists Demidovs, who owned the Nizhny Tagil mines. True, they are guided by their experience in mining, and not by the results of research from American laboratories. Nevertheless, one cannot but agree with them that in the 1870s, Russian copper was really very popular in the West, where it was called "Old Sable". The Demidov mines, undoubtedly, could provide the required volume of production. In 1814, a huge copper quarry was opened on Mount Vyyskaya near Nizhniy Tagil, and by 1850, copper mining there reached 10,000 tons per year. For comparison,the Norwegian mine, candidate number one, was producing only 3,000 tonnes at the time.
Nizhniy Tagil copper was sold mainly on the markets of Western Europe, despite the fact that the mine was very far from the consumer. In 1851, at the first World Exhibition in London, she received three bronze medals, and in 1867, the Demidovs took first place at the Paris Exhibition.
In France, they heard about the successes of Russian miners before. French specialists often came to the Urals to study. In the Nizhniy Tagil archives for the 19th century, hundreds of contracts with foreigners hired by the Demidovs have been preserved. 42 foreigners worked for them - British, Swiss, Germans, Belgians, Italians and 14 French. The personal consultant of the industrialists was Leple, a mining engineer from France, and his compatriot by the name of Bocard worked as an administrator of the Nizhny Tagil plant. Such close cooperation greatly facilitated the establishment of channels for the supply of metal to the Western buyer.
Secret signs
Conspiracy sources also support the version of the Russian origin of the Statue of Liberty. It is known that Bartholdi and Eiffel were members of the French Masonic lodge, and it was the "free masons" who helped them raise 3.5 million francs to make the statue. The construction of the pedestal was funded by the Masonic Lodge of New York. Media tycoon Joseph Pulitzer donated about $ 100,000 for him on the condition that a note with his name and the words "Russian emigrant and Jew" will be laid at the base of the monument. At the same time, according to official data, he was born in Hungary and it was from there that he moved to the United States.
It is known that French and American Masons maintained rather close relations, including those of a business nature, with Russian “freemasons”. And the Demidovs occupied a very high position in the Masonic hierarchy of Russia. After the uprising of the Decembrists, the emperor banned the Masonic lodges, and they had to go underground. "Freemasons" from the capital's aristocracy and bourgeoisie hastily got rid of the images of compasses, trowels and pyramids on clothes, carriages and facades of houses. The Demidovs remained the only ones who continued to openly demonstrate Masonic symbols - a silver hammer and a trowel-like instrument were depicted on their family coat of arms.
Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, who in the 1870s headed the complex of Nizhny Tagil enterprises, spent his youth in Paris. In the mid-1860s, after graduating from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, he continued his education under the guidance of a famous scientist, publicist, politician and … freemason Edouard Rene de Laboulay. At the same time, the young, up-and-coming sculptor Frederic Bartholdi was sculpting a bust of his adored Laboulaye.
One summer day in 1865, the flower of French Freemasonry gathered in the house of Laboulay: Oscar and Edmund Lafayette, the grandsons of the Marquis of Lafayette, the Masonic brother of George Washington, the historian Henry Martin and, of course, Bartholdy. Edouard René shared with his friends an idea: what a beautiful gesture from the French Republicans it would be to give the Americans a memorial symbolizing freedom as a sign of their friendship! Contemporaries called Laboulaye "America's main adorer in France," among other things, the gift was supposed to highlight the contrast between American democracy and the repressive political methods of the Second Empire. For 31-year-old Bartholdi, who, without hesitation, picked up the idea of an older friend, it was a chance to demonstrate his talent to the whole world.
It was not built right away
With the implementation of the venture had to wait until the end of the Franco-Prussian War. In 1871, Laboulaye suggested that Bartholdi go to America and do whatever was necessary for the monument to be opened on July 4, 1876, the centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Without money and a sketch of the monument, but with a heap of letters of recommendation to the American brothers, the sculptor sailed to America. The idea of the statue appeared in his head when he was already sailing towards New York - Frederick quickly made a sketch.
Three years later, Bartholdi returned to France, where he established a Franco-American Union to raise funds for the construction of the "Liberty Illuminating the World" monument. He soon began work on its creation together with the Parisian company Gaget, Gauthier & Cie.
The sculptor copied the face of Svoboda from his mother. First he made a four-foot clay model, then a nine-foot one out of plaster, then he began to proportionally enlarge each of its parts nine times … But the deadline was delayed due to a constant lack of funds.
Although more than 100,000 French donations made donations to the monument, the Freemasons managed to collect the necessary money only by 1880. Probably, the Americans gave them the missing amount. It was not for nothing that Bartholdi invited the United States Treasury Secretary Levi P. Morton to install the first piece of copper cladding on the statue's left big toe. On July 4, 1884, two months after the completion of the work, the monument was officially presented to the US Ambassador to Paris Levi Morton as a gift. For another two years, "Lady Liberty" stood in Paris, waiting for the completion of the pedestal for her in the Hudson Bay.
On August 5, 1884, in the pouring rain, due to which the Masonic parade had to be canceled (there would still not be enough space for it on the tiny island), the ceremony of laying the foundation stone for the statue's pedestal took place. Then, under it, there was that famous "box with a secret", in which, in addition to the names of the Masonic presidents and Pulitzer's strange statement about his Russian roots, they say, the names of all the people who took part in the creation of "Lady Svoboda" are indicated, but for some reason reasons not admitted to this.
In June 1885, the statue, disassembled and packed in 214 containers, arrived in New York. They collected it for another 15 months, and finally on October 28, 1886, a gift from France appeared before the Americans in all its glory. The opening ceremony of the monument was presided over by the President of the United States, Freemason Grover Cleveland. The monument was consecrated by the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of New York Henry Potter, also a member of the Freemasons Lodge. Grand Master Senator Chauncey M. Depew delivered a solemn speech.
And only Russian Masons could not openly announce their participation in the construction of the monument - most likely, they would not be praised for this in their homeland. Perhaps that is why all documents testifying to the sale of 90 tons of Russian copper to France were painstakingly destroyed.
Marriage of convenience
In general, the policy of the Russian tsars in relation to lodges was not distinguished by consistency. Thus, while persecuting "free masons" in his country, Alexander III nevertheless actively collaborated with the French masons. The desire not to get involved in international adventures and wars pushed him to rapprochement with Paris, where at that time the lodge ruled the ball. The sovereign had no choice - Great Britain encroached on Russian territories, Prussia was too aggressive. Alexander had to accept the foreign policy line of rapprochement with France, which was proposed to him by Foreign Minister Giers.
Alexander only benefited from cooperation with Masonic France - huge investments flowed into the country. In 1888, an emissary of the French banks Gosquier arrived in St. Petersburg for negotiations with the Minister of Finance Ivan Vyshnegradsky, who later began to manage the capital of all members of the royal family. In November 1888, a decree was issued on the issue of a Russian gold four percent loan.
Initially, its amount was only 500 million francs. But already in February of the next year, Alexander ordered the issue of a consolidated loan of the first series in the amount of 175 million rubles for the conversion of five percent bonds of numerous railway loans of the 1870s. The French, who saw in Russia a guarantor of protection against the Prussian threat, actively subscribed to it, and thereby stimulated St. Petersburg to expand business contacts.
The deal took place, in April there was a so-called loan of consolidated Russian bonds of the second series, in the amount of 310.5 million rubles. It was issued jointly with the Rothschild Bank and was also a huge success. After that, the French began a virtual "economic occupation" of Russia. They invested in the construction of railways and factories, cut mines and erected oil rigs. This continued almost until the beginning of the First World War.
Perhaps, if Russia and France had become friends a little earlier, the sale of copper for Bartholdi's ambitious project would not have had to be hidden. But now the historical truth is no longer so important, all the same, the statue remained in history not as a Masonic symbol, but as a talisman of emigrants who come to the New World in search of a new life.