Once the legal barriers were overcome, American investments transformed the Cuban economy. Within two years of entering Cuba, the Cuba Company built a 350-mile railroad connecting the eastern port of Santiago to the existing railways in central Cuba. The company was the largest single foreign investment in Cuba for the first two decades of the twentieth century. By the 1910s it was the largest company in the country. The improved infrastructure allowed the sugar cane industry to spread to the previously underdeveloped eastern part of the country. As many small Cuban sugar cane producers were crippled with debt and damages from the war, American companies were able to quickly and cheaply take over the sugar cane industry. At the same time, new productive units called centrales could grind up to 2,000 tons of cane a day making large-scale operations most profitable. The large fixed cost of these centrales made them almost exclusively accessible to American companies with large capital stocks. Furthermore, the centrales required a large, steady flow of cane to remain profitable, which led to further consolidation in the industry. Cuban cane farmers who had formerly been landowners became tenants on company land, funneling raw cane to the centrales. By 1902, 40% of the country's sugar production was controlled by North Americans.