Travelling to the northern state of Wisconsin, Lucky Luke finds a population deeply depressed by a beer shortage that has caused all saloons in the area to close. Desperate, the inhabitants of New München beg Luke to talk to the brewers of Milwaukee. But the cause of the shortage is a strike, and the cowboy is more used to chasing outlaws in the Great Plains than to forcing negotiations between unions and bosses in a city where the first skyscrapers are already sprouting …
Arriving in Cattle Gulch, Lucky Luke runs into an unexpected scene:
an apparent crackpot called Ovid Byrde is about to get lynched. The
man's revolutionary opinions - animal welfare and the sanctity of
life - aren't particularly well-received in this town full of
ranchers and cowboys! After Luke intervenes, though, the locals
simply ignore Byrde ... until he suddenly finds gold, and a pack of
unscrupulous bandits take advantage of the poor idealist to establish
a vegetarian dictatorship!
While dragging the Daltons back to a new prison after their umpteenth escape, Luke comes across a French sculptor, Bartholdi, who's touring the West with a strange sculpture: a colossal hand holding a torch. In fact, it's part of the now famous Statue of Liberty, and Bartholdi is raising funds towards its construction and transport from France. It's not long before our cowboy is recruited by his government to escort Lady Liberty ... from Paris!
