Socialists (and other statists) decry industrialization and free market capitalism because - they argue - a free market system does not distribute goods or wealth "properly".

In truth, and as we shall see, a free market is by far the best, most efficient, and most effective system of production and distribution ever discovered or devised.

In fact, many of the objections to industrialization and mechanization came from the wealthy and privileged in the upper classes, which included many in the "middle" class of merchants and landowners as well as the politicians and nobility, who saw industrialization's empowerment of the lower classes as endangering their own privileges, power, and influence.

It was the mass production of goods, making them available to more people at low prices, that really benefited the lower classes.  Socialism and fascism, which in time will always interfere with and limit mass production, can never help as many people as will a free market.  The evidence is clear and obvious if we care to look for it.

If we set aside the propaganda and demagoguery of the socialists and fascists, and look at the facts, we find that conditions for human living improved with industrialization to the point where, for the first time, poverty as it had been known for generations was being reduced and eliminated.

It was the impoverished and oppressed "masses" referred to by socialist writers who benefited most from industrialization's methods and techniques of mass production. 

Industrialization created jobs and put the spending power of cash wages into the hands of hundreds of thousands of people who had never before been able to rub two coins together.

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