The text "The Chief Features of the Industrial Revolution" is composed of ten paragraphs, reporting and illustrating the most important facts of this period.

It begins defining the essence of the Industrial revolution, that is the period in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and the USA when machines were invented and the first factories were established.

At the beginning of the text the most relevant facts are described.

There has been a relative and positive decline in agricultural population; at the end of 18th century an agrarian revolution broke out for three most effective causes: the  destruction of the common-field system of cultivation, the enclosure of common and waste lands that drove labourers off the lands, as it became impossible for them to exist without their rights of pasturage for sheep and geese on common lands; and the consolidation of small farms into large that reduced the number of farmers.

This period was one of great agricultural advance: 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.

Agricultural produce had increased thanks to mechanical discoveries which altered the character of the cotton manufacture.

The new inventions were the spinning-jenny, the water frame, Crompton's mule and the self-acting mule. James Watt discovered the steam-engine, applied 16 years later to the cotton manufacture.

Thanks to these discoveries the period from 1788 to 1803 has been called "the golden age" when the conditions of workers was very different.                                                                                                              

The iron-industry has been revolutionised by the invention of smelting by pit-coal and the application of the steam-engine to blast furnaces. A further growth of the factory system was possible due to the great advance of the means of communication: the canal system was rapidly developed throughout the country, and in 1830 the first railroad was opened. These changes improved means of communications and caused an extraordinary increase in commerce, but this system meant a change from independence to dependence.                                                                                                    

The effects of the enclosure system, of the consolidation of farms, and of the high price of corn during the French war, made an enormous rise in rents in agriculture and represented a great social revolution and a change in the balance of political power and in the relative position of classes. The farmers shared in the prosperity  of the landlords; for many of them held their farms under beneficial leases, and  made large profits by them.

As a consequence of this their character completely changed; they ceased to work and live with their labourers, and became a distinct class: they changed their habits, had new food and furniture, luxury and drinking: they had more money in their hands.                                                                                                                              

The effects of the Industrial revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.