Industrial Revolution

The text is an extract from "Industrial Revolution" by Arnold Toynbee. The text was dated 1884. It gives a clear account of the historical process called Industrial Revolution. The text is an argumentative text, viz, there is a thesis supported by argumentations.

Beginning from the start Toynbee asserted that " the essence of industrial revolution is the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and the distribution of wealth". The meaning word is COMPETITION that can be defined as the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business  of a third party by offering the most favourable terms.

The industrial revolution was a very important process that revolutionized the word economy in England at first, than in all the word. Europe and the word owes to industrial revolution the growth of two great systems of thought: Economic Science and its antithesis Socialism.

The Developed in England of Economic Science has four chief landmarks, strictly connected with four great English economists: Adam Smith's "Wealth Of Nations" (1776), Malthus' "Essay On Population" (1798), Ricardo's " Principles Of Political Economy & Taxation" and last but not least John Stuart Mill's "Principles Of Political Economy" in (1848).

After That Toynbee explained two means facts of industrial revolution: The greater rapidity which marks the growth of population and the relative and positive decline in the agricultural population.

There were three principal most effective causes  of the decline of rural populations were: The destruction of the common-field system of cultivation; The enclosure and finally 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 period was considered the golden age of Agricultural Production thanks to a more scientific approach to cultivation (the breed of cattle, rotation of crops, the steam-plough and agricultural societies)

Moreover there was the growth of industry, marked by mechanical discoveries (in textile industry the introduction of: 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 the application of steam-engine to blast furnaces)  and by the great advance made in the means of communication ( canal system, roads and railroads). The result of that changes were the passage from a family/domestic system of production to a factory system, and the passage from an independence condition of work to a dependence.

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

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. In that period the alienation between farmer and labourer may be dated.

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

Finally Toynbee conclude with a deep reflection about the effects of Industrial revolution: "the effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being"