The chief features of the industrial revolution

•Ø  Argumentative text à essay

•Ø  Thesis à the effects of the industrial revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well being

•Ø  The Industrial Revolution led to growth of two systems of thought:

 1) Socialism

        2) Economic science: there were four great economists:

•-        Adam Smith à "Wealth of Nations" à investigated the causes of wealth and aimed at the substitution of industrial freedom for a system of restriction.

•-        Malthus à "Essay on population" à concentrated his attention to the causes of poverty.

•-        Ricardo à "Principles of political economy and taxation" à ascertain the laws of the distribution of wealth.

•-        John Stuart Mill à " Principles of political economy" à studied how wealth should be distributed.

•Ø  Industrial Revolution à relative and positive decline in the agricultural population

•Ø  Agrarian Revolution à 3 causes:

   - destruction of common-field system of cultivation;

   - enclosure of common and waste lands, drove labourers off the lands;

   - consolidation of small farms into large.

•Ø  Agricultural advance à 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;

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

•Ø  Iron industry has been revolutionised by the invention of smelting by pit-coal and the application of the steam-engine to blast furnaces.

•Ø  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;

•Ø  Enclosure system, consolidation of farms, high price of corn during the French war à enormous rise in rents in agriculture and represented a radical change in social classes

•Ø  The farmers shared in the prosperity of the landlords à their character completely changed: they ceased to work with their labourers, and became a distinct class; they changed their habits, had new food and furniture, luxury and drinking à they had more money in their hands

•Ø  The effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well being.