To save the expense of casting bronze in the United States the contract was given to Vignali Brothers of Florence. There was an endless interchange of letters and cables. Telephone wires had to be removed and replaced to permit the trucking of the bronze casts to Genoa because some of them were too high. This was the fault of the foundry and added expense for Gutzon. On its trip from New York to Chicago the group encountered patches of the same difficulty and had to be rerouted on a wild course to avoid low underpasses. Faherty, who was anxiously watching all this, finally reported, “Winchester and Sheridan still twenty miles away.” Sheridan eventually arrived for the unveiling. A special “Sheridan Day” had been declared. And there was a big military display with speeches by the governor, the mayor and other dignitaries. All went as scheduled, after which Faherty found time to write of his own troubles. To Borglum he wrote: Surprises turn up as usual in reference to expense. The governor has ordered the soldiers to turn out, but the officers have no money; and the Sheridan Monument Association is called upon to pay $2,500 to defray their expenses. The total receipts from the State and others will amount to about $43,000, and the expenses will be about $53,000. However, the job is done and meets with satisfaction, for which I have to thank you and your wife. Gutzon felt that he had never had a more pleasant association. CHAPTER SIXTEEN _WARS OF AMERICA MEMORIAL_ The Wars of America group in Newark, New Jersey, is the story of a nation told in figures from life and not by allegorical or classic symbols. It is one of the largest bronze memorials in the world, composed of forty-two human and two equestrian figures, all of heroic size. It is the first monument in America to depict mass action. It took three years in the molding, another three years to put it into bronze and ten years of preliminary thought and study. The same patriotic Amos Van Horn who had left money for the Lincoln memorial had also provided for a monument to George Washington, which was created by the sculptor J. Massey Rhind, and for a third memorial to the soldiers and sailors of all our wars, to the men who had given their lives in making and maintaining the republic. Since Mr. Van Horn’s death, World War I had been added to the list. Almost before the Lincoln was finished, Ralph Lum asked Gutzon to begin thinking about the military monument, but the sum of a hundred thousand dollars bequeathed for the purpose was not immediately available and he had to wait. Of his idea to portray mass action the sculptor wrote: