In poor condition. As is. Front cover detached from stapled binding. Front and rear cover exhibits chipped edges & light toning/finger-soiling. Orator's inscription found at top of front cover: "Compliments of Chauncey M. Depew." Water dampness staining exhibited at top and bottom edges of text-block - including frontispieces and tissue guard. Light toning and foxing throughout text-block, no known previous ownership or marginalia. Front cover detached, the rest of binding is intact. Please see photos and ask questions, if any, before purchasing. 

   Chauncey Mitchell Depew (1834-1928) was an American attorney, businessman, and Republican politician. He is best remembered for his two terms as United States Senator from New York and for his work for Cornelius Vanderbilt, as an attorney and as president of the New York Central Railroad System. While Depew was primarily active in the Vanderbilt railroads, he held concurrent positions with many other railroads and companies. He was president of West Shore Railroad and served on the boards of directors for the New York and Harlem Railroad, the Chicago and North Western Railway, and many others. Depew was a distinguished orator and after-dinner speaker and published many of those speeches. Recordings of his speeches  were commercially issued as gramophone discs by Zonophone Records in the late 1890s. 

   At the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, President Grover Cleveland would formally accept the statue after a salvo of cannons and guns from a flotilla in the New York Harbor. Chauncey M. Depew, who, at this point, was not New York's senator but the president of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, delivered his speech. Depew was awarded the coveted final speech position (aside from the benediction) of the day of unveiling. He kicks off his 4,900 word speech by dedicating the statue to "the friendship of nations and the peace of the world." Being previously mentioned in 2019 as a point of controversy, Depew was accused of nativism in his speech, due to the last line of his speech being: "...there is room and brotherhood for all who will support our institutions and aid in our development; but that those who come to disturb our peace and dethrone our laws are aliens and enemies forever." Some believed this was anti-immigrant rhetoric, about a statue whose main purpose was to welcome immigrants to the country at first sight. However, upon further research and context, Depew was speaking of the Haymarket affair, where a rally in Chicago to support an eight-hour work day and against police killing striking workers ended with a bomb being thrown at police. The explosion and following gunfire killed seven police officers and at least four civilians. Depew was referencing labor and police violence, rather than immigrant violence. Depew's speech ultimately focuses on the theme of the statue herself, the bonds between France and the United States, and their common cause of republican self-rule over that of a monarchy. 

This is the complete speech, in pamphlet form, INSCRIBED by Chauncey M. Depew himself. 

COLPAP-1049

01/24 - HK1129