Gutzon Borglum, back at work on the mountain, paid little attention to the political maneuvering in the Association. If he was displeased with anything, he went down to Atlanta and told somebody about it. Otherwise he was getting President Davis and General Jackson out of the rock in shape for presentation on Davis’ birthday, June 3. He was looking forward to the completion of the entire central group by the end of 1926.
He was called from this work to discuss the problem of selling the memorial half dollars. Commercial institutions experienced in such jobs wanted too large a percentage of the profit. Pseudo-patriotic associations wanted more. At a bankers’ meeting in the Biltmore Hotel early in 1925 it was suggested that a number of wealthy men might underwrite the coin so that the money or some part of it might be available at once. The board of the Association authorized the proponent of this scheme to find such a group. And the man who had made the suggestion was Gutzon Borglum.
Borglum wrote to John Kirby of Houston, Texas, and got promise of $100,000 toward a fund of $500,000. With Dave Webb he went into Mississippi and got promise of more money. W. W. Fuller urged him to come to New York and there, with friends in the American Tobacco Company, he lined up a sheaf of pledges. Judge Elbert Gary promised to find more. Gutzon invited these people to meet Hollins Randolph at a dinner in Washington where the sums to be subscribed would be agreed on.
President Randolph of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association failed to show up or to answer telegrams. He was out duck shooting. Nobody, it appears, had time to go and look for him.
Gutzon considered the situation somewhat sadly. The only problem in mountain carving that he could not solve was that caused by human ignorance or cupidity. The Stone Mountain Association somehow had been happy as long as its treasury had been empty. There was now an expectation of an even two million dollars in the till.
The men of the Association formed a quick plan to abandon most of the carving program. It would be simpler, they thought, to spend $250,000 on the central group and reserve the rest of the money “for future causes and purposes.”
On February 18, 1925, Gutzon was going through Atlanta from Stone Mountain to Washington with Lester Barlow, inventor of a depth bomb. Barlow had promised that if the government were to pay him his back royalties, he would donate $100,000 of the sum to the Confederate monument.[A] Barlow says that the sculptor was so outraged at the idea of holding up the spending of money for work on the mountain that he went straight to Washington and got an immediate interview with President Coolidge. His single purpose was to stop the minting of any more Stone Mountain coins.
[A] His claim was settled in 1940 when he was given nearly $700,000.
Coolidge, who sat knee to knee with him in serious and intimate conversation, became incensed. He slapped Gutzon on the shoulder and declared—as Barlow remembers it—“We won’t let those rebels put anything like that over on us.” Barlow does remember vividly that the President promised to put an end to the issuance of the coins. Gutzon slapped him on the knee and thanked him. Of course, nothing more came of this than conversation. Gutzon had hardly reached the Metropolitan Club after his conference when Bascom Slemp, Presidential secretary, called him on the phone. The President, it seems, had not understood. The promise to stop the coin must be considered unofficial.
Things were moving fast in Atlanta. Tucker was called in from Stone Mountain to meet with some of the men who were active in the Association. Tucker refused to talk with them as a group, and Randolph met him alone.