It is often expressed that the single largest area of economic advance in England was in textiles.

Certainly the invention of the spinning jenny, the mule, and other machines capable of improving and enlarging textile production played a key role in the industrial revolution.

However, it was improvements in steel making, and in the development of new techniques in both mining and agriculture, that introduced additional factors that immeasurably improved the human situation in England, and eventually elsewhere.

Transportation was aided and advanced by the digging of a network of inland waterways, along which barges could be inexpensively propelled, carrying goods from the point of manufacture to the point of consumption.

Railroads were also soon introduced, and the incredibly bad stagecoach roads were improved with better surfacing - all of which enhanced the speed and efficiency of transporting goods and people over longer and longer distances.

In short, there was hardly an area of British life that did not receive a boost from the new productive factors at work, all as a result of the industrialization of British society.

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