The Industrial Revolution took place between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, in England. We use the term Industrial Revolution to define the period in which the competition for the medieval regulation, which had previously controlled the production and the distribution of wealth, was substituted. Moreover, first England's economy was based on agriculture and then it became industrial. During this revolution two great systems of thought grew not only in England but in all Europe: Economic Science and Socialism.
But now let's analyse the facts which brought England to these radical changes in people's view of live, work and think. Before the effective Industrial Revolution, at the end of the 18th century, an Agrarian Revolution played a big part in the industrial change. The most important events that characterize the changes in agriculture are three: the destruction of common-field system of cultivation, the enclosure of common and waste lands and the consolidation of small farms into large. Further, the use of new mechanical methods in agriculture reduced the need for manual workers. These facts led to a great decrease in rural population, which moved away and went toward big cities to work in the industry fields. This caused a transfer from an agrarian economy to a urban economy.
Even if the rural population decreased, there was an important agricultural advance, thanks to the introduction of new and more scientific methods. They were: the improvement of the breed of cattle, the introduction of the rotation of crops, the invention of the steam-plough and the institution of agricultural societies.
The innovations took place also in the manufactures and this caused a growth of industry and of its different fields (textile industry, iron industry, commerce). Concerning textile industry, the Watt's steam engine, applied to the cotton manufacture, revolutionised the industry. In fact the most important invention was the power-loom, near the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, the Crompton's mule and the self-acting mule. About the iron industry, there are two facts which led revolution: the invention of smelting by pit-coal and the application of the steam-engine to blast furnaces. The conditions of workman was very different and there was a great expansion of trade. The last one happened mainly thanks to the improvement in means of communication: new canals were opened, it was made a water-way which connected the chief towns and railroads were built. But the expansion of trade brought to consequences; the merchants began to provide for their shop a number of workmen who worked for them and produced goods so there were workmen who passed from an independent condition to a dependent. Moreover there was a regular recurrence of periods of over-production of wealth and of depression.
As tell in advance, the condition of workmen changed thanks to the economic and industrial changes, so we can say that it took place a great social revolution. The change in the balance of political power brought a change in the relative position of classes too. In consequence the two classes created were: labourers and landlords in the agriculture world, capitalists and factory workmen in the manufacturing world. However the common situation was the misery of working people caused by poor living conditions, dangerous conditions in factory, the rise of price and the sudden fluctuations of trade.