“See me in Washington,” repeated Coolidge as they said good-by. And that the historian might record as the beginning of Rushmore financing. Norbeck and Borglum disagreed as to the proper approach to the problem. Borglum said that he would ask the federal government to donate as much as the memorial promoters were able to collect from other sources. Norbeck said no, that money was hard to collect privately, that you couldn’t run drills on promises and that Mellon could be made to pay the full cost. Gutzon, remembering how he had raised more than a million dollars for Stone Mountain, refused to listen to this argument. But, it turned out, Norbeck was right. Toward the end of 1927 Borglum was in Washington. He laid his plan before Mellon just as he had said he would, and Mellon was pleased. So was President Coolidge, for Gutzon’s modesty was something unusual at the time. Norbeck was not pleased. “You could have got it all,” he said. “Now I don’t know what you’ll get.” He put a bill through the Senate, while Congressman Williamson was doing the same thing in the House, providing for a twelve-member commission to take over the drawings, contracts and material now held by Borglum, to be held and owned by the United States government. The $50,000 fund in the Rushmore treasury was exhausted in the middle of December 1927; so work was abandoned and nothing was done in 1928 while everybody in the Black Hills waited for Congress to act. Norbeck was discouraged in 1928. In a letter to Gutzon he wrote: Previous to this, public sentiment has held up pretty well under our repeated assurances that everything would go right along. But the fact that neither you nor I could scare up a few dollars for the work during the summer of 1928 has led people to believe that we were just talking hot air. Very few people in South Dakota take the matter seriously any more. Doane Robinson tries to, but it keeps him awake nights and he needs sleep.... This letter came to Gutzon in San Antonio, where he was working on the memorial to Woodrow Wilson destined for Poland, and he was a bit put out. To this letter he replied: [Illustration: _Photo by Lincoln Borglum_ VIEW OF RUSHMORE SHOWING HEADS OF THE FOUR PRESIDENTS] [Illustration: F.D.R. AT THE UNVEILING OF JEFFERSON, AUGUST 1936] My dear Senator, if I didn’t love you and sympathize with the difficulties you have had to face in the past year, I would get cross. But no one can respect you more than I do, know you half so well, agree with you so much and fail to feel that anything you write would be written in the best spirit. If I say anything a bit harsh, I am going to ask you to treat my remarks in the same spirit.