THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

“Industrial Revolution” is a phrase first used by the 19th historian Arnold Toynbee describing the change from an agrarian and maritime economy to an industrialised economic system which started in Britain around the 1780s. In particular, there was the substitution of the competition for the medieval regulations 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, which affirm that the distribution of wealth is the result of '' particular social arrangements", and it recognised that competition alone is not a satisfactory basis of society.

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 favour of the urban one.

The application of technology to farming methods caused an Agrarian Revolution. The new machineries substituted land workers. They were compelled to go to towns in the North of England looking for work.

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.

As well as the great advance reached in agriculture, thanks to the rotation of crops and to the breed of cattle, there was also the improvement of the manufacture.

Four great inventions revolutionised the textile industry: Hargreaves’ spinning- jenny, Arkwright’s water-frame, Crompton’s mule and Kelly’s self-acting mule. But the most important ones were the James Watt’s steam engine(first produced in 1698) and Cartwright’s power-loom, ratifying the end of the domestic system and the rise of the factory one. What’s more, there were the invention of a new process of producying wrought iron and the application of the steam engine to blast furnaces.

The spread of waterways, roads and later , of railways cut the cost of transporting coal from mines to factories, which were often sited near coalfields. The rapidly growing industrial system required more and better roads and networks to bring raw materials to factories and send finished goods to mines. The phenomenon is also described as the Trasport Revolution.

The economic changes brought about a major social revolution. Alongside the wealthy merchant class a new breed of capitalism was created in the towns. They were factory owners whose enormous fortunes were on par with those of aristocratic landowners.

Besides in the land farmers began to form a rich class and they ceased to work and live with their employers.

On the other side, workers felt all the burden of high prices, while his wage was falling day by day. The relationship master- employer quickly deteriorated, so workers began to form trade associations, such as the Trade Union Movement, which was legalized in 1824.

Finally, the effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.