In May he had spoken for the first time of lottery bonds to guarantee the canal. And at the July stockholders’ meeting he had asked for and received a show of approval. Now he talked of little else. Canal bonds would be sold with numbered tickets attached, some of which, the winning tickets, would be worth large cash prizes. In the final year of the Suez Canal, when an issue of conventional bonds failed to provide funds sufficient to finish the work, just such a lottery issue had saved the canal.
