The heaviest losses fell upon the old wealthy families, who, by the loss of wealth and by political proscription, were ruined. In middle life and in old age they were unable to begin again, and for a generation their names disappear from sight. Losses, debts, taxes, and proscriptions bore down many, and few rose to take their places.[680] The poorer people, though they had but little to lose, lost all, and suffered extreme poverty during the latter years of the war and the early years of Reconstruction. No wonder they were in despair and seemed for a while a menace to public order. To the power and influence of the leaders succeeded in part a second-rate class--the rank and file of 1861--upon whom the losses of the war fell with less weight, and who were thrown to the front by the war which ruined those above and those below them. They were the sound, hard-working men--the lawyers, farmers, merchants, who had formerly been content to allow brilliant statesmen to direct the public affairs. Now those leaders were dead or proscribed, for poverty, war, reconstruction, and political persecution rapidly destroyed the old ruling element, and deaths among them after the war were very common. The men who rescued the state in 1874 were the men of lesser ability of 1860, farmer subordinates in the political ranks.[681] The Wreck of the Railways The steamboats on the rivers were destroyed. At that time the steamers probably carried as much freight and as many passengers as did the railroads, and served to connect the railway systems. The railroads also were in a ruined condition; depots had been burned, bridges and trestles destroyed, tracks torn up, cross-ties burned or were rotten, rails worn out or ruined by burning, cars and locomotives worn out or destroyed or captured. The boards of directors and the presidents of the roads, because of the aid they had given the Confederacy, were not considered safe persons to trust with the reorganization of the system, and, in August, 1865, Stanton, the Secretary of War, directed that each southern railway be reorganized with a "loyal" board of directors.