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. The economic and social consequences are also illustrated at global level. The essayist goes on developing an argumentation in order to explain the radical change brought about by the Industrial Revolution. He explains it mainly consisting in the substitution of competition “for the medieval regulation which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth”. The consequences of the process meant the birth of the difference system of thoughts:Economic Science and it’s antithesys Capitalism. Then the author reports the ideas of four great economists: Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Then he passes at the facts of the I.R.: rapidy increase of population and also decrease in rural population. In the 3rd and 4th paragraph he speaks about the agricultural advance and its scientific approaches. During the Industrial Revolution there was also a growth of industry: texile and iron industry. In the first case the innovations was: the spinning-jenny in 1770, the water-fram,Cromptom’s mule in 1779 and self-acting mule by Kelly in 1792. In the second case the inventions was: the steam engine to blast furnaces and an engine for a cotton-mill. In the 7th paragraph the writer analyzes the means of communication development, specifing the period and the place in which they was first built and what this meant in the distribution of wealth; he supports informations with quantitative data. In the 9th and 10th the writer explains that all this mechanical improvements  certainly involved a remarkable increment of wealth for capitalist employers but this also implied a following rising of prices, especially for prices of rents, causing a real social crisis for the lower classes.