The companies of men who still kept the field did so, for the most part, because they found that the easiest way to make a living. Money was getting scarce and the people were steadily refusing to contribute to the cause. A letter from one of Aguinaldo’s lieutenants was intercepted in which he said that he had found a certain town obdurate and that he thought it would be necessary to take four or five lives before the people could be induced to give money. Murder and rapine, torture and robbery; these were the methods employed, and very little of the money realised ever found its way into the general revolutionary coffers. Most of the remaining “patriots” had become ladrones and were harrying their own people much more than they were opposing the American forces.