ABSTRACT
THE Industrial Revolution was a social revolution with social causes and social effects. So far we have been concerned with the social causes, in the form of the impact upon industry and economic growth of the unique nature and structure of the old society in England. The rest of the book is concerned with the impact of industrialism upon the nature and structure of English society. In this chapter we attempt to sketch, all too briefly, the central features of the social revolution itself, which consisted in a rise in the scale of human organization, not only in industry, transport and commerce, but in almost every other social activity, from religion to government. This revolution in organization inevitably entailed the migration of large numbers of people between occupations, between industries and sectors of the economy, and between communities, above all between the country villages and the towns.
