"Short-Term Misery, Long-Term Gain

"Short-term misery, long-term gain." Is this a good capsule summary of the effects of industrialization? Was the brutal treatment and misery of the workers justified by eventual improvement in wages and purchasing power, or were the benefits outweighed by the ruin of petty craftsmen, loss of rural community life, and dehumanizing factory routine? Consider whether industrialization could have occurred in a slower, less disruptive and more humane manner¾if, for example, medieval communitarian society with its strong guilds and sense of social justice had survived.