[spwa4]

No, it wasn't. And it wasn't because of government regulation. The land you require for preindustrial peasanting was, of course, tightly regulated and owned by ... well, not you. Read the whole "tragedy of the commons", especially the part about government deciding to just sell the whole thing to the highest bidder, which instead of fixing the problem, set off another wave of city migration.

If you stayed on the land you had to work, not quite like a slave, but close. And if you disagreed with this, the government had an army that convinced you ...

Factories offered a better alternative than that, and yes, mostly because the agricultural option was just not open, and just not worth it. They also offered a great density of people that made the labor movement possible in the first place.

[watwut]

Pretty much all historians writing about industrial revolution are claiming completely opposite of what you do. Industrial revolution was a catastrophe for an average worker. The child mortality went up during industrial revolution. Social problems went up. It took quite a lot of violence for things to settle.

[spwa4]

No they aren't. There very much was a reason during the industrial revolution why people were driven to the cities and into the factories.