Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

The new commission met at Rushmore in August 1938, and the sculptor made a report. He wasn’t worried about the statues any more, now that he’d hit enough rock to take Roosevelt’s face. But his plans for the future included a lot of other things, including a big storehouse, more electric power, an adequate water supply to replace the trucking of water four or five miles in cans. He said it was time to begin work on the Hall and Stairway under the figures as specified in the original contract. And he got everything but the Hall and Stairway.

The President’s reorganization bill of 1939, which conferred additional control over Rushmore to the Department of the Interior, caused havoc. Work on the Hall was immediately discontinued over Gutzon’s protest. Construction of the storehouse was stopped. Lumber and materials were left strewn about to be ruined by the weather. He complained to the President and got a compromise order. The Commission was authorized to control carving and finish the storehouse. But the Commission still refused to permit Gutzon to dig his Hall.

It would have been an amazing thing, this Hall, and one day possibly will be. It was to be a room cut out of the solid rock 100 × 80 × 32 feet to an arched ceiling, finished in dressed granite. Here Borglum had planned to store the records of electricity beginning with Franklin—light, heat, music, radio, telephone, telegraph and controls of power as they were used in the spread of the republic. Man’s accomplishments were to be preserved here, sealed in airtight glass cases. If such an exhibition could be provided, he declared, the world a thousand years from now would have something interesting and educational to look at.

In 1939 South Dakota celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its statehood, and a meeting of the people was held at Rushmore. Governor Harlan J. Bushfield, later U. S. Senator, said, “At this time, when freedom and democracy have been challenged in so many parts of the world, no better place for this ceremony could possibly be selected than the Black Hills and particularly this Shrine of Democracy.”

The Sioux Indians were there under Chief Henry Standing Bear, camped in wigwams around the base of Rushmore cliff. Some 15,000 people had come from all parts of South Dakota and neighboring states. Doane Robinson appeared in the same suit of clothes and the same hat he had worn on statehood day fifty years before. It seemed to be a fitting contribution to Rushmore’s most enthusiastic celebration.

Across the country in Washington, Congressman Francis Case, now Senator, of South Dakota, whose home at Custer was virtually in the shadow of the memorial, was carrying on the old fight for funds. To a Congressional committee he said:

The best answer to every question about Rushmore is to see it.... I have seen it grow from a dream to a reality.... The soundness of Doane Robinson’s idea, the dogged persistence of the late Senator Peter Norbeck, and the ability of Gutzon Borglum to inspire people with the works of his hands and with his vigorous exposition of American ideals, have kept the project going on....

And Mr. Case read into the record a letter from John Boland which said in part:

Mr. Borglum is an artist. I am a businessman. Therefore it is only natural that we should at times disagree regarding the business functions of the commission. Such differences, however, have never been serious and an amicable understanding has always been reached. My only desire is to have the Mount Rushmore memorial completed in the best possible manner and to have Mr. Borglum carry on his great work with the assistance of his son, Lincoln, the continued co-operation of the commission and the efficient supervision of the National Park Service.

So presently all human troubles had been wafted away from Rushmore, and briefly the atmosphere was filled with the sweetness and light that Gutzon had foreseen. As the park was landscaped and the carving of the mountain went on with effortless speed, nobody could remember the charge that Gutzon Borglum had an ungovernable temper. He was a keen observer, but he was temperate and he was polite.