Arnold Toynbee's essay deals with the chief features of the Industrial Revolution. It opens with an introduction where the Revolution is defined as an historical process. Also its economic and social consequences are illustrated at a global level.
The essayist goes on developing an argumentation in order to explain the radical change brought about by the Industrial Revolution. He explains it mainly consisted in the substitution of competition for "the mediaeval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth". The consequences of the process meant the birth of two different systems of thought: Economic Science and Socialism, which are exactly the opposite. In the first system there are four important thinkers: Smith, who analysed the causes of wealth; Malthus, who studied the causes of poverty; Ricardo, who sought the laws which regulated the distribution of wealth and Mills, who studied the difference between production and distribution laws.
Afterwards, the essayist gives the reader some quantitative informations about the incredible population increase during the Revolution and the negative effect this process caused on rural population, which deacreased.
The historian proposes three reasons for that: the destruction of common-fields; the spread of enclosures and the consolidation of small farms into large. All these causes contributed to the desertion of lands by many labourers, who went in cities to survive.
Although the loss of population, there were many improvements in agricultural work. It was introduced the rotation of crops; the breed of cattle was improved and, with the birth of steam-engine, was created also the steam-plough.
There were important changes also in industry. In textile industry the invention of the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, the mule and the self-acting mule completely changed cotton manifacture; their employment and Watt's steam-engine in looms caused the fallen of domestic system and the loss of a survive way for families. It was also employed in iron industry, applicated to blast furnaces. In the same time there was a developing of means of communication: canals, roads and railroads caused an increase of trades.
The last part of the essay deals with the social effects of the Industrial Revolution. In rural world the farmers became very rich exploiting leases and they didn't work and live anymore with their labourers. In industry world the class of capitalists was born and, on the opposite side, workmen were their instrument to make wealth. Misery was very spread in working people's world, caused by bad working conditions, the fluctuation of trades and the rise of prices.
The essays ends with a conclusion where is highlighted the Industrial Revolution brought many positive changes but they were positive only for a part of population because "free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being".