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TLS as Secretary of War, signed “Wm. H. Taft,” one page, 5.5 x 9, War Department letterhead, August 11, 1906. Addressed from Taft's summer home at Pointe-au-Pic, a letter to R. U. Johnson, associate editor of The Century Magazine, in full: “I have your note of August 7th. I haven't as yet gotten the material for the Panama article which I hope to get, but now that Shonts has come back from the Isthmus, I think he will probably furnish it to me. I have on hand a speech in Maine, which I must get out of the way before I begin in the Panama article. I note what you say about your cousins, and I shall keep their names in mind.” In fine condition.
The U.S. formally took control of the canal property on May 4, 1904, inheriting from the French a depleted workforce and a vast jumble of buildings, infrastructure, and equipment, much of it in poor condition. An American government commission, the Isthmian Canal Commission, was established to oversee construction; it was given control of the Panama Canal Zone, over which the United States exercised sovereignty. The commission reported directly to Secretary of War William Howard Taft and was directed to avoid the inefficiency and corruption that had plagued the French 15 years earlier.
Theodore Perry Shonts (1855–1919) was an American lawyer and industrialist who served as chairman of the Panama Canal Commission and president of a number of important railways, including the Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York City and the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad.
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