How could we possibly know that? Copyright has existed since before the industrial revolution even started. What you described is not really that far from reality today: most artists are not really making a living. The words "starving artist" have not even begun to lose their meaning. Every artist I know has been failed by copyright. The value a copyright creates is not applied to the art: it's applied to the moat around the art. The only certain beneficiaries are the giant corporations that use their collected moats to drown out small competition, including artists.

The copyright laws that existed prior to the industrial revolution only existed only in a small number of countries. A large swath of the planet had no equivalent.

Even British Colonial America had no copyright, save a handful of exceptions, as the Statute of Anne did not apply to the colonies.