Why couldn’t they immediately unite to demand better conditions or stop working otherwise and return to traditional jobs from the pre-industrial era if conditions were supposedly better then?
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This is a big question and not one with an easy answer. I’m not familiar with the current state of research on the question, but I can fill in some information.
I’ll speak specifically about *England*. The process of industrialisation and its effects was obviously different in different countries.
To start with, let’s talk about “labourers”.
Generally this term is used for a particular group of people, those doing unskilled physical labour. Now before “the industrial revolution” there was “the agricultural revolution”. This generally made conditions worse for agricultural labourers. In particular the amount of “common land” was massively reduced. These were areas where labourers without their own land could do a little farming and help support themselves. Even before the industrial revolution really kicked off the systems of support for the poor in England were struggling.
But that’s perhaps not the class of people you’re actually talking about – maybe you’re talking about workers more generally.
Either way, there’s a great deal of variation. There are both “pull” and “push” factors moving people into industrial work.
On the pull side it could offer higher incomes. A negative was that this tended to come with much stricter work discipline, less independence, more danger, more illness, and less time with family. (It’s not that children working was anything new, but they generally worked in the home and with their family.) That said, sometimes it offered opportunities for more independence – for those who wanted to get away from families.
On the push side, many smaller farmers and agricultural labourers were being squeezed out by changes in agriculture. Small craft workers – most importantly weavers – and all the small industries associated with them were being outcompeted by the factories. Regardless of the actual statistics, which are hard to figure out, there was a general *perception* that industrialisation made conditions worse, especially (unsurprisingly?) for the better off and more skilled workers.
That also gives you an answer to why people didn’t go back to their old jobs: they weren’t viable any more. The cotton that the rural textile industry needed was being bought by factories, which were then producing textiles at lower prices than they could offer.
As to why people didn’t unite to demand better conditions. In large part this is because it was illegal. The “combination laws” banned unions and similar organisations, enforced by government informants and violence. So there were attempts to challenge industrialisation or force concessions from factory owners – the Luddites being the most famous example. The government in the first thirty or forty years of the 19th century was very worried about unrest and revolution. The process of industrialisation and urbanisation also disrupted existing communities and social organisations, making it harder for workers to organise and fight.
This did steadily change through the middle of the century. There’s a general view that a second phase of the industrial revolution saw more attention to the conditions of working people – eg. the novels of Charles Dickens – more effective pressure from working people themselves, and action by governments and owners to improve things. So by the second half of the century, conditions do generally start to improve.
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