Let us pause and take a step back for a moment before we procede, and review how it is that we need to deal with any historic inquiry.

There is an inescapable human tendency that we all have when embarking on a study of a historic nature.

It is this.  Whenever we want to learn about how people lived in years before our own time, our natural tendency is to compare our situation to theirs, to somehow connect that which we know from experience, to that which we do not.

This is understandable, but not particularly helpful.

If for example, we wish to compare the human situation of say the United States in 2009 with the human situation in England in 1769, we'll learn only one thing: Things are better now than they were then. 

What does that tell us about the human experience in 1769? 

Not much.

If we want to see what was happening in 1769 and by this process determine whether or not conditions were improving or not improving under the impact of industrialization, we must first go to a time PRIOR to the period under inquiry.

We must first see what England was like in 1669, or possibly even 1569, before we can detect whether industrialization brought improvement to the human condition, or whether it in fact contributed to man's wretchedness.

Returning now to the accusations which have been leveled against the free market during the Industrial Revolution, we need to ask - did industrialization bring a decline?  Was health ruined?  Did standards of living fall?  Did people work longer hours for smaller returns? Were the children injured and abused?

Common public perception, abetted by the interpretation of history presented in most modern government-run schools -- and by union leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, and social scientists, is that until government intervened through regulation and direct action, industrialization was in the process of enslaving the human race - but that "fortunately", social scientists, labor unions, and politicians combined their forces to throw a roadblock across the highway of man's greed, and thus preserved freedom and raised the living standards of the common man.

But did they?