The Stone Mountain debacle was the result of vandalism pure and simple. It is no longer necessary to defend Gutzon Borglum. Time and the course of events have vindicated him.
Borglum contracted to produce the central group in three years for $250,000, which was to cover his ideas, his designs, models, labor, a portion of his working equipment and his personal compensation. At the end of seventeen months he had produced the first model, master model and all working parts necessary to that date, removed 25,000 tons of granite, completed head of Lee, half head of Davis, designed children’s medal, made model for Stone Mountain coin. Price for above, official audit of March 31, 1925, $113,922.61.
During the thirty months since the employment of his successor, the combined efforts of the sculptor, Weiblen Brothers, and the Association have produced: first models, master models, some working models, blasting of mountain side, roughing out of Lee’s horse. Cost, as stated by Randolph, $171,000.
Mr. Borglum formed a syndicate to buy the entire coin issue. This would immediately have placed $2,500,000 or securities to that amount in the hands of the Association. A condition of the sale was that the money should be used exclusively in carving the mountain.
Randolph declined the offer; his reaction was as follows:
“Under the Borglum proposition, his friends could have sold the coins when they pleased, at whatever price they pleased, to whatever purchasers they pleased, and could have spent the proceeds in whatever way they pleased to carve on the mountain whatever they pleased.”
Mr. Randolph has sold the coins wherever he pleased, when he pleased, to whomever he pleased, and is now engaged in carving on the mountain what he pleases against the protest of the Atlanta Chapter and hundreds of Southern people, having discarded the plans and ignored the purpose entrusted to him. The monument he is building is smaller and entirely different from the one endorsed and subscribed to by the people of the United States, whose funds he has squandered and misspent.
The document goes on at considerable length to discuss the policy of Atlanta banks in keeping the Association alive, and the piecemeal sale of coins to pay back loans that the banks advanced. The banks at the time of Borglum’s departure from Stone Mountain held the Association’s notes for $78,862.72. The marketable property owned by the Association including its bank balances was listed at $6,406.39. The banks in time were paid off by receipts from the coin sale. The statement closes:
Members of the Atlanta Chapter organized the original Stone Mountain Memorial Association and secured its charter.