the classes and the masses

Northcliffe's ownership of The Times, the Daily Mail and other newspapers meant that his editorials wielded great influence over both "the classes and the masses".

Are you trying to tell me that the only real difference between the classes and the masses is that the classes' desperation is noisy, and the masses' desperation is quiet?

Modern historians have moved away from the school of thought that preached the continuous march of progress and democracy, Ashley contending that "history is, after all, the story of human beings and individuals, as well as of the classes and the masses."

This conception of the classes and the masses which he afterwards set forth more fully in his /Country Doctor/ and /Village Cure/, partly explains why all his best work, besides being impregnated with fatalism, has such a constant outlook on the past.