<P> Even with these efforts, fundraising lagged . Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project in 1884 . An attempt the next year to have Congress provide $100,000, sufficient to complete the project, also failed . The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal . With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it . </P> <P> Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000--the equivalent of $2.3 million today . Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given . The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors . "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial ." One donor gave "five cents as a poor office boy's mite toward the Pedestal Fund ." A group of children sent a dollar as "the money we saved to go to the circus with ." Another dollar was given by a "lonely and very aged woman ." Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York's rival city of Brooklyn--the cities would not merge until 1898--donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons . A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35 . As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal . </P> <P> On June 17, 1885, the French steamer Isère, laden with the Statue of Liberty, reached the New York port safely . New Yorkers displayed their new - found enthusiasm for the statue, as the French vessel arrived with the crates holding the disassembled statue on board . Two hundred thousand people lined the docks and hundreds of boats put to sea to welcome the Isère . After five months of daily calls to donate to the statue fund, on August 11, 1885, the World announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar . </P> <P> Even with the success of the fund drive, the pedestal was not completed until April 1886 . Immediately thereafter, reassembly of the statue began . Eiffel's iron framework was anchored to steel I - beams within the concrete pedestal and assembled . Once this was done, the sections of skin were carefully attached . Due to the width of the pedestal, it was not possible to erect scaffolding, and workers dangled from ropes while installing the skin sections . Nevertheless, no one died during the construction . Bartholdi had planned to put floodlights on the torch's balcony to illuminate it; a week before the dedication, the Army Corps of Engineers vetoed the proposal, fearing that ships' pilots passing the statue would be blinded . Instead, Bartholdi cut portholes in the torch--which was covered with gold leaf--and placed the lights inside them . A power plant was installed on the island to light the torch and for other electrical needs . After the skin was completed, renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer of New York's Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park, supervised a cleanup of Bedloe's Island in anticipation of the dedication . </P>

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