How factories were made safe

I love reading about the industrial revolution and the social and economic change from the mid 19th to early 20th century, because you can draw so many parallels to the modern information revolution. The details of the story are different, but the outline is the same:

We've got massive progress and insane improvements to efficiency. The world as it exists now couldn't have been dreamed up half a century ago. On the other hand, there's also serious regressions caused by the efficiency, with novel problems that our society is ill-equipped to solve. All the while, we have a wild west business environment and the founders, executives, and capitalists leading the way are getting unfathomably rich as they make a land grab for ownership over the infrastructure and technology that enables our modern efficiency.

This is a summary of how the factories were made safe masquerading as a summary of why the factories were made safe. It comes to the Whiggish conclusion that factories were made safe because time moves forward. It mentions that the real reason was Workers' Comp., which made injured workers a cost for employers, and buries in a parenthetical that Workers' Comp was created by socialist union protests, and taken up by German politicians as a way to reduce the socialists' popular support.

It concludes with some weird-ass hypothetical conversations between the author and a made-up socialist that ignores that fact. In between, it implies that socialists and anarchists weren't responsible for the 40 hour workweek, either, without offering any evidence (who would need evidence that time moves forward?)

It's really an apologia for capitalism masquerading as a history of factory safety. Apparently it's because of attitudes and mindsets and lack of systems thinking that everybody had, including the workers. If the workers were universally fine with the situation, it's really strange that they protested in the streets until the general populace backed them to the degree that government had to adopt the policy for fear of being voted out.

edit: It's really telling that it starts with an anecdote blaming a child for his own death. You see, the child sat during his shift because one of the managers would let him. With proper systems-thinking mindset, he would have of course been forced to stand for 80 hours a week.

See also the trend for offshoring production to countries that lack any safety standards or worker protections.

The only real progress has been that some companies try to cover up that they're employing child labour by doing it through third parties rather than doing it openly.

We really do need liability for software.

Both. All?