John A. Boland of Rapid City, chairman of the executive committee of the Rushmore commission, was charged with the hiring of workers, purchase of materials and payment of salaries and bills. And it must be said that these worthy endeavors were seldom fraught with any sweetness and light. Boland’s office was in Rapid City--too close to Rushmore, he thought--and he could not move it because of his statewide business. He sat there quietly and never interfered with the carving operations. He felt that Borglum was a great artist and that the carving of Mount Rushmore was a noble undertaking. He may one day be considered a great patriot. One of Boland’s handicaps in the situation was his unwillingness to spend any money that he didn’t happen to have. This attitude was, of course, diametrically opposed to that of Borglum, who never could be convinced that money really mattered. And it is said that these two stalwarts had “occasional clashes.” “Occasional clashes,” one regrets to say, is a highly erroneous and short-weight title for what they had. Gutzon once said that he could feel his blood pressure rising when he got within 500 miles of Rushmore and faced the prospect of seeing Boland. Boland’s blood pressure went up only when Borglum needed money. But the men met, discussed the Shrine of Democracy, swapped observations about the current financial situation and brought the language of toe-to-toe wrangling to a new high. Gutzon declared, of course, that he never took these arguments seriously. No row, he said, was ever worth remembering after its cause was gone; and that, probably, is a true report on his reactions. The last time he and Boland met he was pleased with the course of the world and mellow toward Boland. He had his arm across the chairman’s shoulder and was calling him “Johnny.” What Boland thought about these goings on is, of course, an entirely different matter. He never talks much about his struggles in behalf of majestic art. “Borglum was a great sculptor,” he sums it up. “He certainly was that.” The matter of concessions on Mount Rushmore bothered Gutzon considerably more than most people interested in the project realized. Continuous importunities for jobs and for permission to sell souvenirs and postcards and photographs near the work were petty annoyances with which he found it hard to cope. He knew that some such items had to be provided as part of bringing knowledge of his work to the attention of faraway people, but he would not tolerate cheap workmanship or poor taste in anything sold near the carvings. He got along for a while by keeping this trade under supervision in the Rushmore studio, but the relief was only temporary. A resurgence of what he called “local petty politics” presently involved him so that he called on the Department of the Interior to send someone to protect him.