THE CHIEF FEATURES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The text is an extract from a book written by Arnold Toynbee in 1884 (The Industrial Revolution) and it gives us a clear account of the Industrial Revolution. It is an argumentative text: there is a thesis supported by some argumentations.

First of all Toynbee says that the Industrial Revolution is the substitution of competition for the mediaeval regulations in the system of production and distribution of wealth. The most important word, competition, refers to a particular system of trade in which factories try to offer to people a product with the best quality and the low price.

The Industrial Revolution was a very important process for England but also for all world.
Europe owes to it the growth of two great systems of thought: Economic Science and Socialism.  
The first one has four chief landmarks which are connected to four great English economists: Adam Smith (Wealth Of Nations - 1776), Malthus (Essay On Population - 1798), Ricardo (Principles Of Political Economy and Taxation - 1817) and John Stuart Mill (Principles Of Political Economy - 1848).

After that Toynbee explains two facts of the Industrial Revolution.
The first is the great rapidity in the growth of population: people lived better than before, there was more richness and a general improvement in people's life.
The second is the decline in the agricultural population that was caused by the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation, the enclosure and the consolidation of small farms into large.
All this produced a negative consequence because farmers had to leave the countryside but there was also a positive consequence: the periode was one of great agricultural advance caused by a more scientific approach to cultivation (the breed of cattle, rotation of crops, the steam-plough and agricultural societies).

In addition there was the growth of industry caused by mechanical discoveries (in textile industry: the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, the mule, the self-acting mule, the steam-engine and the power-loom; in iron industry: pit-coal and steam-engine) and by the improvement of means of communication (canal systems, roads, railroads).
The results were the passage from a family/domestic system to a factory system and the change from independence to dependence.

After that Toynbee speaks about a revolution in distribution of wealth. As a matter of fact there was an enormous rise in rents whose causes were: money invested in improvements, the effect of the enclosure system, the consolidation of farms and the high price of corn.

Social changes in country life appeared when the farmers shared in the prosperity of the landlords and the consequence was that they ceased to work and live with their labourers becoming a distinct class.
Also in the manufacturing world there were social changes that consisted in the alienation between farmer and labourer.

The consequences were that the old relations between masters and men disappeared, that a cash nexus was substituted for the human tie and that a class conflict began.

It is very important to consider the condition of working people's life: a lot of them lived in terrible conditions (the misery) because of a fall in wages, of the conditions of labour under the factory system, of the rise of prices and of the fluctuations of trade.

To conclude Arnold Toynbee makes a reflection saying that the effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.