If you think child labor or unsafe and inhumane working conditions started with the industrial revolution your history teachers have deeply failed you. Those existed long before industrialization. Hell, for most of history education was child labor!
I was a history teacher! And you are absolutely correct that of course child labor existed prior to the industrial revolution. But the industrial revolution introduced systematicized, institutionalized child labor and unsafe working conditions at a sense of exponential scale and density. Which is why it's illegal now, which we would all agree is a good thing, whether it happened before or not.
