One of the most important facts of the history is the Industrial Revolution. The text I'm going to analyse, entitled "The chief features of the Industrial Revolution", is an essay written by the 19th century historian Arnold Toynbee. This essay highlights the most fundamental features of this process and its consequences, which really changed the western world during the 18th and 19th century.
  The author supports in his text this thesis: the Industrial Revolution is a period of a great development of industry, commerce and also a period of many discoveries; although this progress and richness, it's also a time of misery and social uneasiness.
  Arnold Toynbee divides into paragraphs his essay. In this way the reader can find easily the evidences and the comparisons between them. His arguments regard all sides in which the Industrial Revolution brought changes: the system of thought, changes in population, advance in industry and new discoveries, trades and a new social order.
  In the first argument he explains the birth of new systems of thought, the Economic Science and Socialism, and he presents the four most important thinkers of the first movement: Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and Mill.
  In the third paragraph he gives the reader some quantitative informations about a big increase of population and the relative decrease of rural population.

  In the following passage he analyses the causes of rural population decrease and he adds some quantitative informations. 

 Then the author focuses his attention on the agricultural advance and its scientific approaches.

 In the sixth and seventh paragraph the reader can find the spheres of industrial growth: textile industry, iron industry, improving of means of communication.

  Then the historian focused his attention on the different distribution of wealth and in the following argument he discusses social changes in manufacturing world and the new social order in the cities, with the factory system and the birth of Capitalism with a worsening of workers' conditions.
  The author ends the essay confirming that the new form of commercial competition, which characterized this period, didn't guarantee social well-being, because wealth doesn't mean social welfare.
  In my opinion, this essay is clear and detailed. The thesis the author supports summarizes the real issue of the Industrial Revolution: production and richness were more important than life of hundred people who didn't take any advantage from the progress.
  The author is really persuasive and by the use of quantitative informations he makes the text nearer the reader and more believable. I think the use of qualitative informations leads the reader point by point in the comprehension of this important historical process. The simple, authoritative and objective language is essential to draw reader's attention to the content of the text.

IMPROVED VERSION

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".