> People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.
Rural life was worse not because rural feudal tenancy was worse than urban factory servitude, but because the technology advances which made it possible to support the latter also simultaneously produced a population boom and reduced the total (not just per capita) quantity of rural labor demanded, producing a whole lot of surplus rural labor.
You think subsistence living was great before technological progress? Why do you think there was a population boom? How do you think population size was controlled before technological advances?
Rural life was worse not because rural feudal tenancy was worse than urban factory servitude, but because the technology advances which made it possible to support the latter also simultaneously produced a population boom and reduced the total (not just per capita) quantity of rural labor demanded, producing a whole lot of surplus rural labor.