The Association was in debt to the Founders’ Roll for the use of $260,800 paid for tablets, and to the Children’s Founders’ Roll for $35,019.91. Suits were being brought by contributors to the first of these funds. G. F. Willis succeeded Hollins Randolph as president. The Association begged for an extension of time, and the Venable family agreed to allow work to proceed until May 1931. However, nothing was done on the mountain during that period. In 1930 the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Park Committee Chairman L. Lawrence McCord, got interested in finishing the monument. Mayor-elect James L. Key, largely celebrated for his huge Sunday School Bible Class, sent a telegram to Gutzon who was then in the Black Hills. He wanted to have Mr. Borglum come to Atlanta as his guest, he said, for the purpose of conference on Stone Mountain Memorial. The telegram was sent in August 1930. It might be mentioned that on July 4 of that year the head of Washington had been unveiled on Mount Rushmore with a great deal of publicity. The sculptor arrived in Atlanta on the first of September and was given a rousing welcome and reception by a capacity house at the Fox theater. It was the first chance public opinion had had to express itself, and the result was gratifying to a man who had had to suffer in silence for five years. He mentioned that if he had to do it over again, he would make the Stone Mountain figures twice the size. He had learned something of mountain carving. The crowd cheered him enthusiastically, and he came home. But little came of it. In 1931 McCord got a bill through the Georgia state legislature, giving the state right of eminent domain to take over Stone Mountain and adjacent property for a park. On this basis talks went on for years and years. In 1933 Sam Venable with Mrs. Frank Mason, to whom he gave his share of Stone Mountain, presented a deed to Mayor Key for the portion of the cliff required for carving, and an attempt was made to get W.P.A. funds to finance the undertaking. There was a vast amount of correspondence without result. In 1936 the governor made an investigation of possibilities. In 1937 W. R. Ulrich of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce met Borglum in Washington and they had a friendly conference. In the winter of 1939-1940 there was another revival of interest, and once more Gutzon was called to Atlanta. The hotel men of Atlanta had suddenly become aware that tourists coming to see Mount Rushmore were dumping large amounts of cash into South Dakota. They were wondering why they had never foreseen this golden reward, and they could see that they needed Gutzon’s help. They were willing to put up enough money to pay for the labor week by week if he would donate his time and use his influence to get credit with the machinery and powder companies.