As soon as he was elected to the presidency he set a committee of competent, accredited engineers to work appraising property values in the different states, and great tracts of hundreds of thousands and millions of acres, previously assessed at half as many thousands as they were worth millions, were revalued and reassessed at their true inherent value. The _haciendados_ raised a frightful cry. They tried threats, intrigue, and bribery. It was useless; the revaluation went on. The new administration reclaimed as national property all that it could of the _terrenos baldios_, or public lands, which under Diaz had been rapidly merging into the great estates. It established a government bank for the purpose of making loans on easy terms, and thus assisting the poor to take up and work these public lands in small parcels. Even before becoming President, Madero had advised the working men to organize and demand a living wage, which they did. He attacked the lotteries, the bull-fights, the terrible pulque trust, the unbridled traffic of which, more than any other one factor, has contributed to the degradation of the lower classes. He began to extend the public-school system. From the first the Cientificos hampered and impeded him. To foment a counter-revolution they took advantage of the fact that in various parts of the country there were disorderly bands of armed men committing numerous depredations. These men had risen up in the shadow of the Maderista revolution, and at its close, instead of laying down their arms, they devoted themselves to the looting of ranches and ungarrisoned isolated towns. Of these brigands--for they were neither more nor less, whatever they may have called themselves then or may call themselves now--the most formidable was Emiliano Zapata. His alleged reason for continuing in arms after the surrender of the dictatorship was that his men had not been paid for their services. President De la Barra paid them, but their brigandage continued. And at the most critical moment Pascual Orozco, Jr., Madero's trusted lieutenant, in command of the military forces of Chihuahua, issued--on the heels of reiterated promises of fealty to the Government--a _pronunciamiento_ in favor of the revolution and delivered the state which had been entrusted to his keeping to the revolutionists, at whose head he now placed himself.