Improved version of the essay analysis : "Industrial Revolution" by Arnold Toynbee

Arnold 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 social consequences are illustrated at a global level. The essayist goes on developing its argumentations in order to explain the radical changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. He explains it mainly consisted in the substitution of competition "for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth". Process consequences meant the birth of two different systems of thought: Economic  Science and Socialism. They are exactly opposite words. The most important experts of Economic Science are Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and John Mill.

Then Arnold demonstrates, with data and statistics, English population's  increase from 1751 to 1821, but also agricultural population's  relative decrease, in the first half of ‘800. This latter fact causes are the common-fields destruction, "enclosures" and the small factory consolidation, as Arnold explains in the fifth paragraph.

However, there were some agricultural and manufacturing  improvements too, as the rotation of crops, the steam-plough, the agricultural society consolidation and particularly the steam engine, which totally revolutionized  human's life and work.

The next paragraph talks about others discoveries in the infrastructures and transports area: the most important invention of the years was the first railroad.

In the other paragraphs the writer explains that all these mechanical improvements certainly involved a remarkable wealth increment  for capitalist employers but this also implied a following prices rising, especially for rents prices, causing a real social crisis for the lower classes.

So, as it  can be comprehended  by the text, this economic system, totally in the hands of the greatest capitalists, has certainly  brought more wealth, discoveries, an increment of population and  a develop of Britain society, but it has also brought misery, discomforts, overpopulation, criminality and diseases , specially for workmen.

The last piece of the essay  is the conclusion, which displays the thesis obtained after this long series of analysis: the wealth doesn't create the welfare.