It is scarcely possible to write the history of popular agitations in these years unless we make at least the imaginative effort to understand how such a man as the ‘Journeyman Cotton Spinner’ read the evidence. He spoke of the ‘masters’, not as an aggregate of individuals, but as a class. As such, ‘they’ denied him political rights. If there was a trade recession, ‘they’ cut his wages. If trade improved, he had to fight ‘them’ and their state to obtain any share in the improvement. If food was plentiful, ‘they’ profited from it. If it was scarce, some of ‘them’ profited more. ‘They’ conspired, not in this or that fact alone, but in the essential exploitive relationship within which all the facts were validated. Certainly there were market fluctuations, bad harvests, and the rest; but the experience of intensified exploitation was constant, whereas these other causes of hardship were variable. The latter bore upon working people, not directly, but through the refraction of a particular system of ownership and power which distributed the gains and losses with gross partiality.