It was the lack laws preventing you from charging whatever you wanted for your own labor, and the lack of laws that forced you to give away a significant portion of that wage.
Like today? It has always been a race to the bottom, that is why things are cheaper today which means life is better today, and that is why we invent technology to momentarily be on top of that race because it can't be stoped, that's why we have to keep inventing it.