The chief features of the Industrial Revolution

The text "The chief features of the Industrial Revolution" points out the most important facts of the XVIII and XIX centuries, which are:

- Agrarian revolution à 3 causes: 1) the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation;

                                                       2) the enclosure of common and waste lands that drove labourers  off the lands, as it became impossible for them to exist without their rights of pasturage for sheep and geese on common lands

                                                       3) the consolidation of small farms into large that reduced the number of farmers.

- Period of great agricultural advance: enclosure brought an extension for arable cultivation, the breed of cattle was improved, rotation of crops was introduced, the steam-plough was invented and agricultural societies were instituted;

- Agricultural produce had increased thanks to mechanical discoveries: the spinning-jenny, the water frame, Crompton's mule, the self-acting mule and the steam-engine;     

- The iron-industry has been revolutionised by the invention of smelting by pit-coal and the application of the steam-engine to blast furnaces;

- Great advance of the means of communication:  the canal system was rapidly developed throughout the country, and in 1830 the first railroad was opened à  extraordinary increase in commerce   

- The enclosure system, the consolidation of farms, the high price of corn during the french war  à  enormous rise in rents in agriculture and  represented a radical change in social classes;

- The farmers shared in the prosperity of the landlords; for many of them held their farms under beneficial leases, and made large profits by them à their character completely changed; they ceased to work and live with their labourers, and became a distinct class: they changed their habits, had new food and furniture, luxury and drinking: they had more money in their hands.

- The effects of the Industrial revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.