By sequentially transmitting whole directory trees? FTP-the-protocol never had anything useful to say here. It's always been about FTP-the-client and these didn't need things like "control channels" and "active mode" to do what they're doing.

FTP is a pretty conceited protocol, and one that deserves to go away. People say it made more sense in the 80's, but I was there and even then *NIX/Solaris admins found FTP to be about as much fun as that IRC pingback identd service; which is to say not very fun.