The title of the text makes me expect that it will be about the Industrial Revolution and the word “Chief” that it will be about the most relevant changes of the period.

The text speaks about all things changed in this period and also the change of mentality. The first paragraph tells to the reader the most important writers and books that spook about the Industrial Revolution:  Adam Smith with his Wealth of Nations (1776); Malthus, Essay on population (1798); Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817); John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848). The second paragraph is about the great growth of population that took place during that period: from the increase of population before 1751 of 3 percent of every decanal to the period from 1811 to 1821 of 18 percent. The next paragraph tells the reader the changes in agricultural industry and the causes of this changes. The causes of this changes were the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation, the enclosure and the consolidation of small farms into large. Changes were a great agricultural advance, the breed of cattle was improved, the rotation of crops was introduced and the steam-plough was invented.

Then the text starts to speaks about changes in the other industries during the industrial revolution. The most important inventions related to the period were: the spinning-jenny (1770) of Hargreaves; the water-frame (1769) of Arkwright; the steam-engine (1769) of James Watt; the Crompton’s mule (1779) and then the self-acting mule (1792) of Kelly; the power-loom (1785) of Cartwright. This new system where machines substituted the men’s work let trade to expand. The canal system has been developed throughout the country and in 1777 the Grand Trunk canal (96 miles) connected Trent and Mersey. Between 1818 and 1829 there have been added a thousand miles of turnpike road and in 1830 the first railroad has been opened. The growth let the commerce increase enormously and made a really big change in distribution. The situation caused an enormous rise in rents: between 1790 and 1833 they doubled. For example in Scotland the rental of land raised from £ 2.000.000 to £ 5.278.685. The most important change in society has been probably the lost of relationship between Chief and workers and as a consequence Chiefs became the “enemies” of the workers.

The kind of argumentation of this essay is different for each paragraph but at least we could find three different kinds of argumentation: informative, evaluative and comparative.

To sum up what the text wants to say is that the Industrial revolution took very important changes in society and commerce and also that a system of free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.