Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

However, there turned out to be competition. Another company had made overtures to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association offering to do the job for a cent or two less and intimating that somebody—they wouldn’t of course say Gutzon Borglum—was to profit in some way on the difference in price. Gutzon, who had put away his anger during his coin negotiations in Washington, suddenly went berserk again. He turned over to the committee all his correspondence with the Medallic Art Company, showing that he was not getting a cent. He reminded them that he had made all the models for the coin and children’s medal without recompense, and pointed out one after another the things he was doing on the mountain for love alone.

“You seem to forget the promotion of your coin idea,” he snapped at them. “Who paid me for that? Who paid me for the time I spent getting pushed from one office to another? Who around here ever pays for anything? Who is honest enough to think that he has to?”

Most of the directors tried to placate him, but some weren’t convinced. Borglum’s blood pressure was still rising when he went out.

In another week there was another bitter quarrel. Gutzon, whose view of his associates was still pretty dim, came across some publicity material designed to promote the sale of the memorial coin. He might not have liked it had he been untroubled by other things. He certainly did not like it in his present state of mind, and his criticism of the publicity director was sudden and bitter. The publicity director answered him in kind, bowed and retired, and, thereafter, the two men never got along together.

Amity was singularly lacking around the memorial headquarters for the rest of the summer. Unfortunate things just continued to happen. The Borglums, toward the end of August, went to Nantucket where, at the request of Ed Howe, the sculptor was to give some talks at the summer school for social science. They had barely arrived when Gutzon got an emergency call to get back to New York. In a heat wave of unexpected virulence the wax model of the children’s medal had melted and the completion of the work had been stopped.

The records show that the Stone Mountain Memorial Association was loudly indignant and remarkably bitter. Letters subsequent to the telegrams complained about the sculptor idly vacationing while there was important work to be done.

Gutzon replied that he hadn’t melted the wax and that he had previously expressed himself on the subject of the company employing the thumb-fingered medal maker who did do it. Conditions of mutual trust and good will when he repaired the damage and returned to Atlanta were no better than they had been.

Work on the memorial, however, was proceeding smoothly. Gutzon had moved his family into a house near Stone Mountain. The hard-rock men and dynamiters in the crew had learned their jobs. The figure of Jackson would be ready for unveiling in April and that of Davis in June 1925. L. M. Roberts, the Association’s engineer, had examined the work and reported that everything was going along according to contract. Gutzon was ahead of his schedule.

In March 1924 the fund-raising activities of the Association began to pay their way. At the end of the month receipts equaled expenditures. In April, before the start of any extraordinary fund-raising campaign, receipts amounted to more than $28,000 and there was plentiful evidence that the flow of cash would continue during May.

The annual meeting of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association was held in April 1924 and was marked by some political maneuvers that greatly irritated the U.D.C. Officers had to be elected. A new board of directors and a new executive committee was to be chosen to act for the next twelve months. It was an understanding in the Association that the presidency would be passed around from year to year, but this year the old president made a plea for re-election. The national presidential campaign was in full progress. The Association president had been active in support of William Gibbs McAdoo and was having some friction with the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. If he were re-elected president of the Association, he said, he would have greater status in politics, and he would resign immediately after the primary election. His request, unfortunately, was granted. It was no help to McAdoo.