THE CHIEF FEATURES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The text is a little extract from the book written by Arnold Toynbee in 1884 called The Industrial Revolution. It helps the reader to better undersatand what this process is and how it develops. This text has got an argumentative structure: you can find a thesis which is supported by argumentations.


In the begining Toynbee expesses the idea that the Industrial Revolution consists of a substitution of competition for the mediaeval regulations in the system of production and distribution of wealth.


The Industrial Revolution became a very important process for all world, particularly in
Europe, it developed two great systems of thought: Economic Science and Socialism which are one the opposite of the other. The first one has four chief landmarks which are made by the most important economists in English history: Adam Smith (Wealth Of Nations), Malthus (Essay On Population), Ricardo (Principles Of Political Economy and Taxation) and John Stuart Mill (Principles Of Political Economy).


Later Toynbee speaks about  two facts of the Industrial Revolution. 
The first one is the sudden growth of population: people lived better, there was a general improvement in hygienic conditions. The second one is the decline in the agricultural population caused by the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation, the enclosure and the consolidation of small farms into large.
Thanks to these changes the periode is remembered as age of great agricultural advance caused by a more scientific approach to cultivation in which were intruduced the breed of cattle, rotation of crops, the steam-plough.

Even in industry there were improvments thanks to the mechanical discoveries and and the improvement of means of communication (canal systems, roads, railroads).
The results were the passage from a domestic system to a factory system.

After that Toynbee explains the new distribution of wealth. At th time there was an enormous rise in rentscaused by: money invested in improvements, the effect of the enclosure system, the consolidation of farms and the high price of corn.

Also in the manufacturing world there were social changes: the old relations between masters and workers disappeared and a class conflict began. In the end Toynbee expesses a reflection : the effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.