Really pathetic but unsurprising that people here are downvoting this comment. It's not often that you see an author constructing a literal straw-man these days; the piece flatly ignores the importance of the massively powerful labor movements of this period--so powerful that states were regularly resorting to armed struggle with them--instead pretending that "social reformers" existed in a vacuum.
Did we read the same article? The author addresses the labor movements and points out that they weren't very concerned with improving safety, sometimes worked against it and cites sources along the way.
