This essay, written by Arnold Toynbee, deals with the historical process known as the Industrial Revolution. It follows that in this period ( XIXth Century ) there were such radical changes.
The writer reports the definition of what is the Industrial Revolution, so it is the substitution of competition for the medieval regulation, this had always controlled the distribution and production of wealth.
In consequence, this revolution created two different systems of thought: the Economic Science and the Socialism. Linked to the Economic Science, the writer gets four examples of the most important English Economists: Smith, Malthus, Mill and Ricardo; each one investigated the causes and effects about wealth, industrial freedom substituted by a system of restriction, the growth of science, the causes of poverty, the difference between production and distribution and also the growth of population.
At the end of the XVIIIth Century, there was an agrarian revolution that plays an important role in those changes that would have been some years later.
These changes led a decrease in rural population, and the most relevant causes were: the destruction of common field system of cultivation, the enclosure of common and waste lands, the consolidation of small farms into large. It follows that, the effect of this change produced the reduction of the number of farmers, the enclosure drove the laborers off the land, and they haven't anymore the way to rich themselves.
On the other hand, there was an improvement from agricultural advance, because there was more scientific approach, in fact the breed of cattle was improved, rotation of crops was introduced, the steam- plough was invented and agrarian societies were born.
As regards the growth of industry, it was very important the new mechanical inventions in textile industry: examples are spinning- jenny, the water-frame, the Crompton's mule and the self-acting mule, even if the most important and relevant invention was the power-loom. The effect was a improvement of what in that period was the condition of workman.
Then there was the mechanical revolution in iron industry, which led the invention of smelting by pit-coal, and the application of steam-engine to blast furnace.
Last but not least, the improvement of means of communications: water way, turnpike road, and railroad. As a result we have an increase of commerce, and the substitution of factory system for domestic system.
During Industrial Revolution, the most important issue was the distribution of wealth. Connected to this, the population saw a rise of rents caused by money invested in improvements, the enclosure system, the consolidation of farms, and the high price of corn. These facts caused a change in the balance of political power and in the relative position of classes.
It follows that, after the war the distribution of wealth led to population into different ways to live, in a luxury or in a disastrous one.
In conclusion the effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition produce wealth without producing welfare.