"The Chief Features of the Industrial Revolution" written by A. Toynbee is a thesis text where there are described the causes and effects of the Industrial Revolution. The analysis is led through paragraphs of both quality and quantity information, touching different aspects of the phenomenon.
The subject of paragraphs are different. First of all Toynbee talks about birth of economic science and Socialism with their more important theorists (paragraph 2): Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations (1776) focuses on the production of wealth and not on welfare; Maltus in Essay on Population (1798) pay attention to the causes of poverty; Ricardo in Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) studies how wealth is distributed; John Stuart Mill in Principles of Political Economy (1848) improves Ricardo's thought and talks about laws of production too.
In the other paragraphs the author explains the consequences of the Industrial Revolution: growth of population (increasing specially between 1751 and 1821) and decline in agricultural population (caused by the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation, the enclosure of common and waste lands and the consolidation of small farms into large, paragraph 3 and 4), other aspects of agrarian revolution (improvement of the breed of cattle, rotation of crops, invention of the steam-plough, agricultural societies, paragraph 5); changes in manufacturing sector (invention of new technologies such as spinning-jenny, water-frame, Crompton's mule, self-acting mule, steam-engine, engine for cotton-mill, power-loom) and iron industry (invention of smelting by pit-coal, application of steam-engine to blast furnaces, paragraph 6); improvements in trade and communications (improvement of canal system, adding new canals such as The Grand Trunk canal and The Grand Junction canal; creation of new turnpike road and the first railroad, paragraph 7); birth of class-conflict (the lower class become more poor due to hard condition of work and life and rise of price and the consequently rebel, paragraph 10). The examination ends with the main sentence, that is the thesis, in which Toynbee supports that free enterprise system produces wealth just for a small part of population.
In order to be believed by the reader the author appears very precise and gives him many time data, numbers, percentage about what he's saying (there're a lot of information about increasing of population and rise of rents in paragraph 3, 8 and 9). With the same aim, he uses the mean of list: for example where he speaks about the new technological invention of the period.
Further, the text contains contrasts or association whereby the author can better underline the situation before and after the Industrial Revolution (mainly about population, prices, lands distribution) and it uses also lots of quotations by contemporary scholars, such as Cobbett and Laurence, to argue the thesis.

Improved version

Arnold Toynbee’s essay is 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 social consequences are illustrated at a global level.

The essayist goes on developing argumentations 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 regulation which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth”. The consequences of this process meant the birth of two different systems of thought: economic science and socialism.

Second and third paragraph analyse the background of the Industrial Revolution, focusing to the population of this period: the first fact is the noticeable growth of it that reaches the 18 per cent, but there is also a decline of it in agricultural world.

The author, in next paragraph, studies in depth agrarian situation in order to find this evident decline’s causes: destruction of the common-field system, the enclosure of common lands and the consolidation of small farms into large.

Starting from those facts, the essayist develops the argumentation on Revolution’s basis, describing technological improvement in agrarian system and their effects on the society. Toynbee highlights how just a small part of English people (landlords) has advantage from it while the majority became more poor than ever, supporting his final thesis.

After he passes to manufacture sector where there’s the most striking change: “the substitution of the factory for the domestic system”. The author lists all the new invention, essential for the rising industry.

The same approach is used in paragraph 7 too, where the main improvements in trade and communications  are described. The passage ends with some considerations linked to the thesis, as when it speaks about the work “done by persons who have non property in goods they manufacture” alluding to the increasing of poverty.

The same theme is deepened in the following section about the distribution of wealth and particularly on the increasing of rents that makes landlords richer and farmers more needy.  

The examination ends with the main sentence, that is the thesis, in which Toynbee supports that free enterprise system produces wealth just for a small part of population. To brake it’s disastrous effects legislation has to operate a control.