This letter came to Gutzon in San Antonio, where he was working on the memorial to Woodrow Wilson destined for Poland, and he was a bit put out. To this letter he replied:
My dear Senator, if I didn’t love you and sympathize with the difficulties you have had to face in the past year, I would get cross. But no one can respect you more than I do, know you half so well, agree with you so much and fail to feel that anything you write would be written in the best spirit. If I say anything a bit harsh, I am going to ask you to treat my remarks in the same spirit.
I have a feeling from your letter that you feel I have not raised the money that should have been raised; that I have not carried through the matters I should have carried through. Now let us clear up a few of these points. First, because it was with great reluctance that I took up the Black Hills work, for it is a terrific undertaking and I found the country and the people utterly uninformed in such matters and without funds. I agreed to go to the Hills and make a survey for a fixed sum. That was accepted; a bill was introduced in your state government with the result that nothing was paid for that service by the state. I found, in other words, that whatever I undertook, I had to carry much of the load all the time, in financing and developing interest, in engineering and production.
Finally when the work was in hand it was always in South Dakota that the inertia was felt most. While I was there, everything was promised; immediately I left, everything was put off until I returned. I have made at least three complete rounds of the cities in the southwest of South Dakota, feeling out gatherings for the purpose of informing and interesting the people and securing help for the memorial. I have been informed, time and again, at each of these gatherings, that the necessary funds were available provided your committee, or someone you designate, would either be with me or go and collect the money.
This was told me even at the Homestake Mine, where I talked for a solid hour to the manager and legal head of the concern, and secured from them the statement that they were completely sold on the proposition and would do their part. You yourself secured their contribution. I am not blaming you for anything. I have never questioned your wisdom, or your politics, or the reasons for delay in Washington. But I do think, and you must bear me out in this, that if the bill had been passed, the past year would have been one of energy, action and production, with the head of Washington completed on the mountain.
Less than a month after this exchange of letters the Rushmore bill was passed; $250,000 was appropriated on a matching basis and more than $50,000 released to match sums previously subscribed. Considering the carving program, this fund was still nothing to cause much celebration. The making of monuments has always been expensive. One such group alone—the Jefferson Memorial in Washington—had an estimated cost of $3,000,000. But one takes what one can get, and Gutzon was cheered again.