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 consisting in the substitution of competition "for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth".
The consequences of the process meant the birth of the difference system of thoughts economic science and socialism which are exactly the opposite.The four great English economist that Arnold Toynbee shows in his text are:Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and Jhon Stuart Mil. Then he analyses the facts of industrial revolution about the growth of population and the relative and positive decline of rural population . After he considers the existence of an agrarian revolution in the big Industrial Revolution and gives us the three most important causes of the decrease of rural population: the destruction of the common field system of cultivation ;the enclosure; the consolidation of small farms into large.

The change in agricultural system brought an inferior farmers number and a large parts of land to cultivating. There is a substitution of scientific for unscientific culture.

This period is most important for the agricultural advance infact was improved the breed of cuttle, rotation of crops was generally introduced and the steam-plough was invented. the essayist underlines as the factory has substituted the domestic system incrementing the mechanical discoveries.

The invenctiones discoveries are: the spinning-jenny, patented by Hargreaves in 1770;the water-frame, invented byArkwringht the year before; Crompton's mule introduced in 1779, and the self-acting mule first invented by Kelly in 1772.

The important innovations as the canals,water-ways and the rail road brought an increase of commerce, this situation produced an over-production. Then toynbee gives us informations to the life of workers and farmers after the industrial revolution. The new class of capitalist are rich and live in a luxury world while the worker live in a difficult situation.

Toynbee in conclusion writes that the industrial revolution produce wealth but without producing well-being.