THE CHIEF FEATURES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The text is an extract from The Industrial Revolution a book wrote by Arnold Toynbee in 1884  and it gives us a clear account of the Industrial Revolution process. It is an argumentative text.

First of all Toynbee shows his thesis: the Industrial Revolution is the substitution of competition for the mediaeval regulations in the system of production and distribution of wealth. The most important word, competition, refers to a particular system based on the economic laws of demand and supply.

The Industrial Revolution broke out the English’s edges and became also important for all the world.
In Europe two new system of though developed: Economic Science and Socialism.  
The first one has four chief landmarks which are connected to four great English economists: 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). The Mill’s book also presents some aspects of Socialism, because Mill wondered how wealth ought to be distributed. From his analysis resulted that there is not equity in distribution of wealth.

After that Toynbee explains two process of the Industrial Revolution.
The first is rapidity in the growth of population: there was more food, richness and a general improvement in people's life.
The second is the decline in the agricultural population that was caused by the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation, the enclosure and the consolidation of small farms into large.
The period was one of great agricultural advance caused by a more scientific approach to cultivation (the breed of cattle, rotation of crops, the steam-plough and agricultural societies).

Industry growth tanks mechanical discoveries (in textile industry: the spinning-jenny, the water-frame, the mule, the self-acting mule, the steam-engine and the power-loom; in iron industry: pit-coal and steam-engine) and by the improvement of means of communication (canal systems, roads, railroads).The results were the passage from a family/domestic system to a factory system.

Social changes in country life appeared when the farmers shared in the prosperity of the landlords and the consequence was that they ceased to work and live with their labourers becoming a distinct class.
In the manufacturing world there were social changes that consisted in the alienation between farmer and labourer.

Arnold Toynbee makes ended his essay saying that the effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.