You know my comment said some people, wealthy people lived better in some ways than present day impoverished factory workers? Farm hands, Eastern European serfs and so-forth did not live better by any means.

As other have noted, the industrial revolution also got much of it's impetus from peasant being driven off the land they cultivated.

Maybe the alternative, whatever it was, seemed to be more horrible. Agriculture for example is really vulnerable to weather and other environmental factors. But the factory is always there, summer or winter, wet or dry season.

Because rich people fucked with their livehood, and even passed laws to indirectly force them to become industrial workers. And there was furious battles against that current...