The aid offered for the construction of these lines was more generous than any previously provided by Congress. In the first place, the roads were entitled to a right-of-way four hundred feet wide, with permission to take material for construction from adjacent parts of the public domain. Secondly, the roads were to receive ten sections of land for each mile of track on the familiar alternate section principle. Finally, the United States was to lend to the roads bonds to the amount of $16,000 per mile, on the level, $32,000 in the foothills, and $48,000 in the mountains, to facilitate construction. If not completed and open by 1876, the whole line was to be forfeited to the United States. If completed, the loan of bonds was to be repaid out of subsequent earnings. The Central Pacific of California was prompt in its acceptance of the terms of the act of July 1, 1862. It proceeded with its organization, broke ground at Sacramento on February 22, 1863, and had a few miles of track in operation before the next year closed. But the Union Pacific was slow. "While fighting to retain eleven refractory states," wrote one irritated critic of the act, "the nation permitted itself to be cozened out of territory sufficient to form twelve new republics." Yet great as were the offered grants, eastern capital was reluctant to put life into the new route across the plains. That it could ever pay, was seriously doubted. Chances for more certain and profitable investment in the East were frequent in the years of war-time prosperity. Although the railroad organized according to the terms of the law, subscribers to the stock of the Union Pacific were hard to find, and the road lay dormant for two more years until Congress revised its offer and increased its terms. In the session of 1863-1864 the general subject was again approached. Writes Davis, "The opinion was almost universal that additional legislation was needed to make the Act of 1862 effective, but the point where the limit of aid to patriotic capitalists should be set was difficult to determine." It was, and remained, the belief of the opponents of the bill now passed that "lobbyists, male and female, ... shysters and adventurers" had much to do with the success of the measure. In its most essential parts, the new bill of 1864 increased the degree of government aid to the companies. The land grant was doubled from ten sections per mile of track to twenty, and the road was allowed to borrow of the general public, on first mortgage bonds, money to the amount of the United States loan, which was reduced by a self-denying ordinance to the status of a second mortgage. With these added inducements, the Union Pacific was finally begun.