The story is still circulated in the South that Gutzon Borglum was a genius of evil temper with whom no one could possibly get along; that he had quarreled bitterly with the ladies of the U.D.C. and, in a huff, had destroyed his models and all that it was possible to destroy of the carving on Stone Mountain, and had gone away. But none of that is true except that he did destroy a pair of models. If anybody thinks that the carving of the Confederate memorial was a simple thing, he may consider the odd politics that took over the project at the annual meeting of the Association in 1924. There would have been nothing simple about that even if Borglum had never lived. Little had changed in the atmosphere except that money had begun to roll into the treasury and there was prospect of more. The Children’s Founders’ Roll was getting a large number of members, the children’s medals were being distributed in quantities, and presently the memorial coin would come out of the mint. 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.