Those seemingly horrible jobs were better than what they had before. You can tell because people voted with their feet. They left their farms to take those jobs, and didn't go back.

Something similar plays out with "sweatshop labor" these days. People talk about the abuses, but there's often the same flow of people from the countryside lining up for the openings.

That's not to say that stopping stupid abuses and unsafe conditions isn't important, it's just important to keep in mind how bad things often were. Simply having a job with a salary that guaranteed you wouldn't starve was a huge improvement for some people.