You are conflating "less opressed" with "not opressed", and disregarding all of the actual opression that was happening to labor from both business owners and t

You are conflating "less opressed" with "not opressed", and disregarding all of the actual opression that was happening to labor from both business owners and the government. Also it was the industrial revolution when people were flocking to the cities to work in factories in part because working a farm was no longer enough to survive for most people. Other than a few periods of time when the government gave out land grants, a penniless immigrant couldn't just show up and get land.