I haven't substantiated the standard of living for workers didn't improve seriously until governemnt intervened? Well, this is standard history. This is what you find when you read up on it. It is conventional wisdom. It is like challenging the Earth revolves around the sun.
Ironic point of comparison, seeing as how the opposite was conventional wisdom at one point, too. "It's cool, you can ignore that Copernicus guy; he's totally outside the mainstream." Also, you actually
could point someone to mathematical proofs about the heliocentric theory. If what you're saying is conventional wisdom, that doesn't absolve you of substantiating it; it makes it all the more ridiculous that you won't.
Morever, leaving aside the fact that saying something is "conventional wisdom" just absolves you of having to think about it or make any kind of argument (yeah, surrender your critical faculties; that's always a great way to get at the truth), there's another problem: it's really just confirmation bias. I can point you to any number of economists who say otherwise, but we both know you'll brush them right off. That means that your "conventional wisdom" is just a collection of the claims you decide to accept. It achieves a phantom consensus by finding reasons to exclude all differing opinions.
It also doesn't jibe with your actual behavior. Why would you go out of your way to make this argument, dodge a bunch of requests for evidence to support it, and then like 10 posts later say you shouldn't have to?
Are you arguing the Progressive Movement had nothing to do with improvements in the standard of living and working conditions, that it is just an amazing coincidence it occurred concurrently?
No, it's not a coincidence, and if you think that's what's being suggested you've been following things even less than I'd hoped. They got those standards when they fought for them because they'd become economically viable. Workers have always wanted to work less and live more comfortably. We still do! But it happens when technology progresses sufficiently. You can simply declare that working 40 hours ought to provide a comfortable life, but try going back 500 years and saying the same thing. It wasn't possible then, and such things are not made possible by simply
asserting that they ought to be. You can assert that pencils ought not to cost more than X amount, too, but it won't make mining lead any cheaper.
Workplace safety, shorter hours, benefits, etc., are the
result of increases in wealth, not the cause of it. They don't magically become feasible because we demand them; we demand them because they're now feasible. And even that's pretty myopic, because mandating these things doesn't increase wealth, it just moves it around. It only ensures that a portion of the worker's wages (or the cost of the product or service) is adjusted to compensate it.