American History - Part 129 - Cleveland - All About The Statue of Liberty - AFL Labor Union
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-07-06

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.
Grover Cleveland was elected president of the United States in eighteen eighty-four. He was the first Democratic Party candidate to win a presidential election in almost twenty-eight years.
President Cleveland also was concerned about a growing number of labor disputes that took place in the United States in the late eighteen hundreds. He proposed that Congress create a labor committee to help settle the disputes.
KAY GALLANT: Congress failed to act on this proposal. But its lack of action did not stop the rise of a labor organization that had been formed a few years earlier. The group soon would become the most important labor union in the United States. It was the American Federation of Labor, or A.F.L.
Led by Samuel Gompers, the A.F.L. was different from earlier labor groups. It did not try to put all workers into one union. Instead, it tied together a number of different unions and gave them general leadership.
HARRY MONROE: The A.F.L. was different in other ways. It did not oppose the economic system of capitalism. It said only that labor should get more of the earnings of capitalism. The A.F.L. also opposed extremists who used labor protests to change the social system.
What the A.F.L. called for were things workers wanted immediately. Higher wages. A shorter work day. Better working conditions. One of its first demands was an eight-hour work day. This demand led to a number of strikes and protests throughout the country.
KAY GALLANT: The most serious incident took place in Chicago's Haymarket Square.
More than one thousand union supporters went to a meeting there organized by an extremist. They stood calmly and listened to speeches. Just before the meeting ended, someone threw a bomb into a group of policemen. The bomb exploded with a blinding flash. Seven policemen were killed.
The other policemen began shooting at the crowd. Some people in the crowd fired back. When it was all over, ten persons had been shot to death. Fifty others were hurt.
The incident set off a wave of fear and anger across the country. The public demanded action against union extremists. The Haymarket Square violence slowed the growth of organized labor in the United States for many years. It would be some time before labor became a powerful force in national events.
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HARRY MONROE: In the spring of eighteen eighty-six, President Cleveland announced that he was to be married. The ceremony took place in the White House.
A few months later, President Cleveland and the First Lady went to New York City for the official ceremony welcoming the Statue of Liberty.
The statue was a gift to the people of the United States from the people of France. It represented the alliance between their two countries during America's war for independence from Britain.
The statue was the creation of French artist Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi. He decided to make a statue that would represent freedom -- a Statue of Liberty. He said it should stand on an island in New York harbor. There, he said, it would welcome all who came to America through that gateway.
KAY GALLANT: Bartholdi decided to make a copper statue in the image of a woman -- Lady Liberty. High above her head, she would hold a torch of freedom to light the world. The statue's face was the face of Bartholdi's mother.
The artist asked French engineer Gustave Eiffel to build a steel support to hold the heavy statue. Eiffel was the man who later built the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The statue was built in France. Then the pieces were sent across the Atlantic Ocean. It was rebuilt in New York.
HARRY MONROE: Grover Cleveland and his wife were not the only Americans to attend the Statue of Liberty ceremonies in eighteen eighty-six. Thousands of people crowded onto ships in the harbor to watch the great event. Thousands of others crowded the shorelines around the harbor. Everyone cheered wildly when a signal was given and a huge cloth fell from the statue.
 
The Statue of Liberty in 1886
Lady Liberty stood holding her torch high for freedom. Under her feet were the broken chains of tyranny. Below the statue was a poem. It called to the poor and oppressed people of the world. It told them to come to America to find a land of hope and freedom.
KAY GALLANT:
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shores.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
HARRY MONROE: The Statue of Liberty was a great success. It was one of the great engineering wonders of its time. And it filled Americans with pride in their tradition of freedom and openness to people from all lands.
We will continue our story next week.