The extract is an argumentative text taken from the essay "The Industrial Revolution" written by the English economic historian Arnold Toybee in the 1884. The thesis presented is the following: free competition may produce wealth without well-being. This sentence is enunciated clearly in the final part and it is argumentated with the description of the Industrial revolution effects. The text may be divided in paragraphs, each with its function.
In this argumentative text, Arnold Toybee highlights the dominant though during Industrial Revolution, consisting in the idea of technological improvement, in the desire to accumulate wealth and in the will to be the most powerful nation in the world; moreover he highlights the fast changes, occured in the rural zones and in the cities, which involve capitalist imprenditors from one side and labourers from the other; while the formers become more and more rich and powerful, the latters have to endure an hard life and to face criminality, poverty, prostitution and alcolism.
"The Industrial Revolution is the substitution of competition for the mediaeval regulation". This is the definition from which all changes start. The autor explains the most evident ones: the great growth of population, the destruction of the common-field system, the eclosure, the consolidation of small farms into large, the improvements in the agricultural camp(rotation of crops, steam-plough...), the mechanical discoveries (spinning-jenny, water-frame, Crompton's mule, self-acting mule), the great advance in the means of communication (canals, roads, railroads, steamships) and the revolution in the distribution of wealth.
All these changes bring both positive aspects and negative aspects. The formers are linked with wealth: improvement of the industrial and agricultural production, expansion of trade, growth of the factory system; the latters concern well-being: enourmous rise in rents, falling of wages, bad condition of labour in the factory, high price of bread, fluctuactions of trade.
The autor, with the illustration of these causes and effects, provides strong argumentations to the thesis, but he might have added further informations about factory worker's life conditions. He only writes briefly that "we all know the horrors that ensued in England", making understand that, in the 1884, those horrors were still alive in the mind of English population and that everybody could confirm the truthfulness of his thesis. Only in the second part of the 19th century laws and combinations were created in aid of labourers. Before these devices, indeed, workers had to bear many hours of work and fight alone with deseases and poverty. Without doubts, therefore, the thesis is sure and it reveals that the Industrial Revolution brought to a quantitative and not to a qualitative growth.

  IMPROVED VERSION

Arnlod's Toynbee's essay deals with the chief features of the Industrial Revolution.
It opens with an introduction where the revolution is defined as an historical process. Also its economic and secial consequenses are illustrated at a global level.
The essayist goes on developing his argumentation in order to explain the radical change brought about by the Industrial Revolution. He explains it mainly consisted in "the substitution of competition for the mediaeval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth". The consequences of this process meant the birth of different systems of thought, Economic science and Socialism which are exactly the opposite.
After this theorical explanation he begins describing the facts starting from the most evident ones: the rapid growth of population and the fall of the rural population. The author also gives, not only here, numerical information in order to make his argumentations clearer and more accurate.
The industrial change, Toynbee writes, was caused in particular by an agrarian revolution which brought to the distruction of the common-fields, to the enclosure of common and waste lands and to the consolidation of small farms into large. These three consequences are considered by Toynbee the causes of the decrease in the rural population, but not only. They are also connected to an another aspect about agrarian revolution that is the agricultural advance: rotation and of crops and the steam-plug were introduced and agricultural societies were instituded leading to an increase in production.
Afterwards the essayist passes from the agricultural camp to industrial one, making a list of the inventions which allowed the factory system to displace the domestic one. The most important were the cotton-mill improved with James Watt's steam engine and the power-loom (the last two completely revolutionized textile manufacture). With these improvements the production increased and good conditions for workers were created. Other important improvements were achieved in iron industry
Toynbee continues describing the means of communication such as canals, roads and railroads which determined a growth of trade and a development in the factory system. The concept, he writes, at the base of this system is that "the work is done by person who have no property in the goods they manufacture". The trade, in spite of his expansion, it was hit, after periods of over production, by depressions.
This situation brought about similiar changes in the distribution of wealth both in rural zones and in the cities. In the country , farmers got rich and became a distinct class divided from the labourers, forced to endure high taxes and low wages. In the cities the division was between capitalist employers and workmen. While the formers lived in the richness and faraway from their factory, the latters had to fight against awful conditions of work and high prices.
The text ends with the consideration that "free competition may produce wealth without well-being", which is the thesis of the essay, and with the note that the terrible workman's life conditions are still well-known by all