Well, that‘s not related to this specific conversation, but industrialization in socialist states did that in a number of cases. Soviet Union between 1950s and 1970s has seen significant growth and by various accounts achieved up to 5x improvement in purchase power compared to Russian Empire at its peak, in 1913 (how much goods could a worker buy for their salary, not including welfare, which was obviously superior in SU). I‘m not saying socialism is good, the price paid for that was terrible. And anyway my argument wasn’t that there were better societies, just that America of 1800s was ugly place to live even for many white Europeans (and let’s not forget that 60% of the time in that century there existed slavery). People went there not because it was great (and not everyone went there, many German settlers chose opposite direction, moving to Wild East, helping colonial expansion of Russian empire). It was just marginally better than certain places in Europe with its wars and famines.