The Industrial Revolution

I'm going to write a short essay about the Industrial Revolution, summing up an extract taken from Arnold Toynbee's "The Industrial Revolution", written in 1884.

My text will be argumentative and so there will be a thesis supported by different argumentations.

First of all Toynbee says that the Industrial Revolution meant  the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations in the system of production and distribution of wealth. Competition means that there are different factories that offer similar products but people buy the best product at the lowest price.

In this process, England was the main actor, but after a little time the Industrial Revolution implied meaningful economic and social consequences for all Europe. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution led to the growth  of two systems of thought: Economic Science and its antithesis: Socialism.

Economic Science developed acoording to four chief landmarks in Economic Science: four great economistswrote interesting works and namely Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations (1776), Malthus, Essay On Population (1798, Ricardo (Principles Of Political Economy and Taxation - 1817) and John Stuart Mill, Principles Of Political Economy (1848)

Toynbee continues his essay referring the most relevant facts of the Industrial Revolution: the growth of population and the agrarian revolution.

The first one was caused by a general improvement in people's life because there was more richness than before while the second one consisted in a decrease in rural population caused by the Enclosure system, the destruction of the common field and the consolidation of small farms into larger ones.

Also there was a more scientific approach to agriculture being strictly connected with new ways to work in the country: the breed of cattle, the rotation of crops and the use of  the steam-plough.

The growth of industry was caused by mechanical discoveries in the textile industry: the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, the mule, the self-acting mule, the steam-engine and the power-loom In the  iron industry: pit-coal and the steam-engine were employed and the improvement of  communication means like canal systems, roads and railroads marked a speddier distribution of goods.

Direct consequences of such radical change in the production system that adopted competition principle were the passage from a family/domestic system to a factory system and the change from l independence to dependence.

In the last paragraph Toynbee discusses about the rise in rents caused by the money invested in improvements, the effect of the enclosure system, the consolidation of small farms into larger ones and the high price of corn. Such factors alltogether caused a revolution in the distribution of wealth: capitalists employers took little or no part in the work of their factories and  as a consequence the old relations master-men disappeared, "cash nexus" was introduced and workmen gathered in Trade-Unions.

It can be therefore rightly said that if the Industrial Revolution brought about wealth it not necessarily brought about well being.