The sad part is that there are plenty of modern leaders trying to get us BACK into those desperate times

There's more than a few truly powerful private businessmen in the US, who are trying as hard as they can, politically, to bring us back to the days of the "Robber Barons." Child labour, you say? They say: why not bring it back? No minimum wage? They say: wouldn't that be wonderful? Abolish taxes altogether! They say: Woo hoo! Law of the Wild West for the country and Gangs of New York for the city!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_%28industrialist%29But I will shut up on that... It seems to me that there are plenty of people who'd love to go back those terrible days, if we're not careful. Perhaps a subconscious nostalgia for the past we all carry around in the pocket.
On other things... I'm not sure we're are that different.
In terms of morality in private and public, it's more a matter of how we present ourselves. How much do we hide in the closet. How much do we cover up our "misdeeds." The thing is, we are a lot less discreet nowadays, especially when you're Tweeting your unmentionables to the public every half hour (and while on the job!)
Heck. 40 years ago, really wasn't that far back for me

There's a couple of things that bother me. Not everything in the past was terrible, and not every new rule we invent today is actually good...
For example, while I understand that today we protect children a lot more than we did 40 years ago, I fail to understand how we can justify subjecting out children to violence in the media, while being downright ridiculous when policing our children's dress habits in public schools.
Also, a curious modern phenomenon I saw developing in the last 25-30 years: I fail to see why a 30 year old man marrying a 40 year old woman is somehow a "moral dilemma," as it seems that the only proper maximum age difference for dating or marriage nowadays is exactly 4 years, 11 months, 29 days, 23 hours, and 59 seconds, after which the older member in the couple (typically the male) will be deemed a "paedophile" and then be shunned by society. This regardless of age, such that the same applies to the 80 year old woman marrying the 90 year old man (as if you could tell the difference between the two).
In the meantime, our daughters are having sex and getting pregnant at the age of 13 often with older boys all the way up to age 18. HOWEVER, in the peculiar case that an 18 year old boy is older by say... 6 months than a girl, age 17, and said boy has intimate relations with said girl, then he is now found to be in contempt of the law, and then will be incarcerated for Statutory Rape, Relations with a Minor, and needs to be registered as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Makes a lot of sense to me-Not. Who is making these rules? 21st. C morality? Or maybe I'm just an old fart who clearly belongs to the 20th. C.?