Learning Paths » 5C Interacting
This text, written by Arnold Toynbee in 1884, is an essay that discusses the Industrial Revolution and its effects in the history. The purpose of the writer is to prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.
The first part of the text is an introduction made up by three lines. The writer explain us what the text will deal with, setting the Industrial Revolution in its chronological context, the nineteenth century.
In the second paragraph the writer give us his idea about the Revolution. In fact he states that the essence of the industrial revolution is the substitution of competition for the Medieval regulation which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth. Besides he affirms that the Industrial Revolution caused the development of economic science and the socialism. Going on he argues this ideas by mentioning four important writer and their works: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Mathus' Essay, Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation and, last but not least john Stuart Mill's Principles of political Economy.
Going on the essayist affirms that during the I.R there was a growth of population. He makes his case using quantitative information about the population growth. After that he discuss the agrarian revolution, another consequence of the I.R, and he wonders how was it possible the decrease of the rural population, in order to give the causes.
In the following paragraphs the writer discuss the most important inventions in the textile industry, the mechanical revolution in iron industry and the improvement of means of communication in order to draw the results of these changes.
Going on Toynbee explains the changes in the distribution of wealth and social changes in manufacturing world in order to find the consequences. For example he affirm that the rise in rents was caused by enclosure system, the consolidation of farms and the high price of corn during the second war. These things caused the birth of a new social class, the Landlords, but they soon lost most of their wealth.
In the end the writer talks about the misery of working people, giving the causes. In this way the writer proved that the free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being. The writer, for reach his target, used strong argumentations. Usually he explains the fact, often using statistical data, its causes and also the consequences. In the text the writer use a very concrete language, with a lot of linkers and connectors ( Firstly, Secondly, coming to the facts, passing to, a further, in consequence), in order to help the reader to follow his argument.