I hear a lot about how terrible working conditions were in the 19th century. My question is, people have been living in pre industrial society for a long time, why did people abandon their previous lifestyles to move from their families into the cities if they were to be treated like dirt? I don't understand the mindset of those people, like how could people be compelled to work in such horrible conditions when they had a clear alternative?
This question pops up from time to time. More could always be said, but there was a pretty good discussion of it here.
You will notice that there's some controversy over how much the enclosure of common lands by landowning moneyed elites forced the rural population into the cities where they could be cheap workers for factories. It's an attractive thesis ( oppressive overlords turning their peasants off their land to become starving factory workers), but much of the enclosure had happened a good bit before the Industrial Revolution, so there were already plenty of rural workers looking for urban employment when the mills were built.