The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

In 1894, the year the New Panama Canal Company was organized, Cromwell had become general counsel for the Panama Railroad, a stockholder, and a director. This had come about because he was at the time involved with C. P. Huntington and the Southern Pacific, which by then virtually controlled the Panama Railroad as the result of a traffic agreement. Presently he had started looking after the “interests” of the New Panama Canal Company, promising its officers an “open, audacious, aggressive” campaign of “publicity, enlightenment, and opposition” all planned with “Napoleonic strategy.” He was to profess most earnestly later on that his underlying purpose at all times had been to give the United States the best possible canal. But from other things he said and did it is clear that his fundamental objective was to sell the French company to the United States government, or, that failing, to some other government or combination of foreign capital. And for such efforts he expected to be well paid. His fee for services rendered when finally submitted to the Compagnie Nouvelle would be for $800,000.