The robot revolution and other great transformations in the nature of work | Letters

Deborah Orr (We are fools to think robots make the future better, 7 November) makes a point about the industrial revolution, but gets it backwards. Yes, children worked in poor conditions, as did their parents, but the countryside emptied as the towns filled up because a horrible job in a factory was (and still is in much of the developing world) a better life than as an agricultural labourer.

The towns offered wages, improved living conditions, access to better food and the opportunity for continuing education. It is also much easier for labour to organise in an urban setting than scattered across the countryside. If you don't believe me, you could always ask the hundreds of millions of Chinese who have done exactly as we did as their country industrialised.
Geoff Jago
Hemswell, Lincolnshire