John W. Mackay, lest people of our war-tossed world forget it, was an international personality for several reasons. He was, among other things, one of the Big Four of the Comstock Lode, a silver king and a builder of the first cable laid across the Atlantic. He had been a consistent fighter with a tough constitution and no feeling, ever, that he could fail to win.
Gutzon told Clarence Mackay that he would need all the photographs that might be available of the man and also all the data, news and rumor about him that might still be extant. Mackay saw the point. He not only gathered up all the information that his agents could find, but he visited the studio every morning on his way from Long Island to Broadway and spent a half hour reminiscing with the sculptor. Gutzon presently began to feel that he knew John W. Mackay pretty well.
The statue, inasmuch as it had to stand in the open, was scheduled to be eight or nine feet tall. Because of the static nature of the material, Gutzon said, anything less than that would look smaller than human. He made careful sketches to determine position, expression and general composition, and all of this took several months.
“I want to show my father as he was,” Mackay said, “a workman in the mines out of which his wealth and his position in life came.”
Because of this the model showed the capitalist in the dress of a miner—top boots, loose shirt open at the throat and shapeless working trousers. The left hand was grasping a pick handle against which the body leaned. The right hand was upturned, holding a piece of quartz.
Clarence Mackay liked it. When it was done he asked Gutzon to take it to Nevada and find a place to put it. “It is very difficult work to make a statue,” he said. “I think it is more difficult to find the right spot to display it. And I think the man who is qualified for one job is best qualified for the other.”
Thus began a new and complicated adventure. Gutzon met Sam Davis and went to Carson City, Nevada, carrying letters of introduction to state officials. There they met Governor Sparks, who looked interested but extremely puzzled.
Carson City was without parks, city squares or, for that matter, any cultivated landscape. The governor scratched his head and said, “Doesn’t seem to be much place where you could put a statue around here ... unless you want to stick it out in the middle of the street.”
The local organizations—patriotic, political, business, social—all had something of the governor’s attitude but were guided, in public action, by good old Western individualism. Each one suggested where Gutzon could put his statue, but no two could reach an agreement. The sculptor labored with them for several weeks and got very annoyed. He began to think that there was no reason for locating the work in Carson City. The right place for it, he
