The Industrial Revolution was one of the greatest changes in the history of society. It transformed Britain's green and pleasant land from an agricultural world into one dominated by machinery: spinning and weaving were mechanized; roads, railways and canals spread across the country; mining and factories wiped out the cottage industries and eroded a rural way of life for ever. Man's immense inventiveness and skill also created appalling suffering and cruelty, sacrificing humanity for profit in a society riven with inequalities that remian today.