THROUGHOUT HIS NOVELS, Thomas Pynchon combines strict fidelity to previously forgotten historical records with conjectural or fantastic narratives which nevertheless contribute to making a moral or political argument. In Mason & Dixon, he employs this characteristic strategy with events at the intersection between two kinds of narrative in eighteenth-century history. The first concerns labor history, and in particular the wages for weavers, who were among the first workers to experience the effects of an early industrializing economy. This narrative interest figures in Mason & Dixon because of the efforts of weavers in the southwest of England in late 1756 and early 1757 to obtain an increase or at least to avoid a decline in wages through group action such as strikes, public assemblies, and machine breaking. The second, intersecting strand at work in Pynchon's novel is military and imperial history, specifically the presence of Colonel (later General) James Wolfe in Stroud and surrounding areas of Gloucestershire to keep the peace in late 1756. Pynchon's account of the events that brought together the weavers and General Wolfe is striking and illuminating for the accuracy of many of its elements, for the way it re-animates this important episode in English history, and for its substantial inaccuracies and fictionalizing. Through this combination of scholarly accuracy and imaginative fabrication, Pynchon shows Mason and Dixon's ability to move outside their expected ideological positions, but he misses the opportunity to recognize Wolfe making the same step.