The Chief Features of the industrial Revolution is a detailed account of the Industrial Revolution, a period which brought changes in agriculture, manufacturing, technology and communication in nineteenth century England.

Right from the title of the essay the reader can understand the intentions of the writer. While the first paragraph is a declaration of intentions of Toynbee, the second one gives us a clear definition of the revolutionary period: “the essence of the Industrial Revolution is the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth”.

The writer with this clear definition wants to draw the attention on the word “competition”, a law according to which the price of goods are established by demand and offer.

After this short explanation Toynbee reports the opinions of the four most important economists of the time quoting the title of their works. In 1776 Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations in which he investigated the causes of the production of wealth, Malthus with Essay on Population analysed the causes of poverty and Ricardo, in his publication, showed how wealth is distributed under a political economy and taxation. John Stuart Mill, unlike the other economists, understood that if the State doesn't regulate the laws of the market, people will become very poor. The interest of this economist was to find out a solution for a fair distribution of goods and to reduce the differences among social classes.

The following paragraph is an informative one, where there are described the two main causes of the Agrarian Revolution, which was the basis of the Industrial Revolution: the growth of population supporting by quantitative data and the decrease of agrarian population. Britain was a rural society but the application of technology to farming methods caused a revolution in this field. Lots of farmers moved to town from countryside looking for a job. The most important factors which facilitated the Industrial transformation of England were innovations in iron and textile industry and improvement of means of communications.

Toynbee, at the end of the essay, presents his own conclusion: the Industrial Revolution is an important factor in the development of society in England but at the same time says that wealths of few people, middle class, do not always coincide with well-being of others.