It was the policy of the company to invite settlers upon its lands before the lands were patented, and then to select and apply for patents on lands which settlers desired to buy.[93] Sometimes, indeed, the company leased unpatented land to cattlemen at low rates, in spite of its lack of title. Actual transfers were made by bargain and sale deed warranting to the purchaser the entire title acquired by the company from the federal government. The prices ranged from $2.50 to $20 per acre, but little was sold at a price above $5. Usually land covered with tall timber was held at $5, and that covered with pine at $10. The actual cost to the purchaser was slightly greater, because he was compelled to pay for the acknowledgment of three signatures to the deed, and for the recording, amounting in all to perhaps $5.50 or $6. On the other hand, the company granted as much as five years’ credit, and through the practice of selling land seekers’ tickets from San Francisco, Sacramento, San José, Lathrop, and Los Angeles to points along the line of railroad, which were accepted as cash on the purchaser’s first payment for his land, it practically furnished free transportation for California terminals to the sections bought. This last practice, at least, was in force on the Southern Pacific in 1880, and presumably on the Central Pacific also. All in all, the Central Pacific does not seem to have attempted to withhold its lands from the market, and there is no evidence that the settlement of the coast was retarded by the inability of prospective settlers to get land. The price which the Central Pacific could exact was held in check by the retention by the government of alternate sections, while the large sums which the company spent for advertising redounded to the advantage of the government as well as to that of the railroad. To the general statement that the Central Pacific was not unreasonably grasping in its capacity as landed proprietor, exception must be made of its treatment of timber lands in the North, of which mention will be made elsewhere. The land-grant policy of the government was a mistake, but it was a mistake because it unnecessarily enriched a few men by securing to them an extravagant share in the unearned increment due to the development of the state of California, without aiding them materially in the task which the government most desired them to perform—not because the grantees endeavored to build up landed estates or to discourage the growth of population. Compared with the land grant, the bond subsidy was distinctly the better policy. CHAPTER IV PROGRESS OF CONSTRUCTION—CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES Commencement of Construction