Dickens wrote many social satires critical of injustices he perceived at the time like workhouses (basically sweatshops backed by organized crime) and Yorkshire boarding houses (pools of child labor). His descriptions of city life were not pleasant: pollution, crime, and unrest. It may have been quantitatively better for society in the long run but I think that the people stuck in those workhouses might have chosen nothing instead of the job they had been so graciously provided if they were given some other means of sustaining themselves.