Unfortunately I can't show you what life was like before the industrial revolution, because we don't have images or movies from that time, suffice to say that life then "was short, brutish and hard". Child mortality was rampant, according to Adam Smith it was not unusual that a woman who had had 10 children didn't see any of them grew up to be adults.

There is no goal, but progress is moving as far away from that condition as humanely possible, as fast as possible. This is best achieved with capitalism.

If you want full scale employment just create another world war, so that we can draft everybody and piss all our wealth away.