THE CABLE IS LAID 133 
percent stock. The former preferred stock would come next 
for dividends at eight percent, and the common stock would 
rate four percent dividends. 
This seemed like a reasonable arrangement, and Field 
sailed for America. In November, Captain James Anderson 
of the Great Eastern wrote him that things were not going 
well. “I am sorry you are not here,” he said. “Somehow no 
one seems to push when you are absent.” Field wrote to 
Saward, the secretary, that unless favorable news came, he 
would return to England and help. 
When he arrived in England on the day before Christmas, 
1865, he learned that the Attorney General had just ruled 
that the Company had no legal right to issue twelve-percent 
preferred stock ranking over the older preferred stock. The 
Company’s lawyers had advised the opposite, but now the 
money already subscribed had to be returned and the work 
of making the new cable stopped. It was not a merry Christ- 
mas at all. This flattening out of the plans was typical of 
what Field had to contend with on many occasions during the 
long years of effort. 
For advice, Field went to one of the cooperating owners 
of the Great Eastern, Daniel Gooch (later made a baronet 
for his cooperation). His advice was to organize a new com- 
pany; several other associates concurred. After meetings of 
the directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company and of the 
‘Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company, a new cor- 
poration was formed under the name of the Anglo-American 
Telegraph Company. The officials composing these com- 
panies were largely the same, and the operations were linked 
by contracts, which also included the American corporation, 
the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Com- 
pany. Field was among the ten who subscribed ten thousand 
pounds each; and the generous English capitalist, Thomas 
Brassey, who had come to the rescue a year before, offered to 
supply sixty thousand pounds if necessary. The six hundred 
