The main body of the old ruling class - the nai - did not perceive that modernisinsing change would serve their interests at all. However, they benefited from the change to a cash economy and an increase in trade in two ways. They could sell surplus rice produced by the phrai and that working for them. They collected payments from phrai who went to work in the developing urban sector, for instance as craftsmen and from phrai working full time on estate lands and opening up new farming areas. When required by the government to supply workers for corvée, they provided their that rather than the money-producing phrai.