The lyric is alluding to the fact that the country's foundation was built on 100s of years of free labor.
The practice of exporting worthless printed paper in exchange for valuable labor intensive goods is also what that lyric is pointing to.
American slavery, a model that has evolved and now encompasses much of the globe.
Keeping a large % of the world and "undesirable" domestic population poor, at gun point if necessary, is in America's national economic interest.
Such as your opinion.
I don't think slavery would have been abolished without the industrial revolution.
That is most certainly not the usual interpretation of free labor.
The overwhelming majority of slaves in the US were field hands in plantations growing cash crops. How exactly did rudimentary agricultural mechanization around the time of the American Civil War in any way precipitate abolition?
Yeah, no.