THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

"Industrial Revolution" is an expression by the 19^th economist Arnold Toynbee used to describe the shift from an agrarian and maritime economy to an industrialized one which started in Britain around 1780 and later developed in Europe and in the rest of the world. In particular, there was the substitution of the competition for the medieval rules of production and distribution of wealth.

The Industrial Revolution brought to the birth of two opposite systems of thoughts: Economic Science, which tried to understand the laws of production and distribution of wealth, and Socialism. In addition, it caused also radical changes in the fields of agriculture, manufacture, commerce and society.

According to the first point, the main fact which occurred was the decrease of the rural population in favor of the urban one. Land workers were substituted by the new machinery, so they went in towns in the North of England in search of work, especially in mines and in factories. The decrease was also due to enclosure of fields, consolidation of small farms into larger ones and the destruction of  common- field system of cultivation.

Likewise the great advance reached in agriculture, thanks to the breed of cattle and the rotation of crops, there was also the improvement of the manufacture. In particular, the textile industry had a great development, because of four great inventions: Hargreaves' spinning- jenny, Arkwright's water-frame, Crompton's mule and Kelly's self-acting mule, all invented between 1769 and 1792. But the most important ones were the Watt's steam engine and Cartwright's power-loom, which made together the definitive end of the domestic system and the rise of the factory one.  What's more, the iron industry was improved by the invention of smelting by pit-coal and the application of the steam engine to blast furnaces.

The Industrial Revolution brought also to a Transport Revolution, causing a great expansion of commerce. For example, roads, railways and canals were built throughout the country in order to bring raw materials to factories and send finished goods to markets.

So, the Revolution had completely changed the British society, spreading the difference between the rich and the poor. Indeed in the land farmers began to form a rich class and they ceased to work and live with their employers, as well as in the manufacturing world the new class of urban capitalists  made enormous fortunes by owning factories and taking no part in the work of them. On the other hand, these changes had opposite effects on the condition of the workman, in the sense of: he felt all the burden of high prices, while his wage was falling day by day. This was caused by the high price of corn, during the Corn Laws, the consolidation of farm and the rental of land. In addition, the relationship master- employer quickly deteriorated, so workers began to form trade associations to look after their interests, such as the Trade Union Movement, which was legalized in 1824.

Finally, you can easily notice that the Industrial Revolution had only increased the spread between the rich and the poor, without producing all-man well-being.