The government was not responsible to the Abgeordnetenhaus (lower chamber), whose powers were small and whose members were elected by a Prussian three-class francsuffrage system based on tax-paying abHerrenhaus (upper chamber) was largely controlled by the conservative Junkers, who held immense tracts of generally poor land east of the Elbe (particularly in East Prussia). Endowed with little money and much pride, they had continued to form the officer corps of the Prussian Army. The rising industrialists, notably the great Rhenish and Westphalian mine owners and steel magnates, although their interests were often opposed to those of the Junkers, exerted an equally reactionary influence on politics.