There was never a time anywhere in the history of the world where one working man could work a low-skilled laborer's job and comfortably provide for a family of four.
And outside of the US Post WW2 -- from the 50s to the late 80s -- no where else on Earth could one working low skilled person afford such a high quality of life.
If you consider farmers in the 1890s as living outside of sustenance, I guess to each their own. But they worked 7 days a week, basically 12 hours a day, including their entire family, just to afford basic accomodations and food and almost literally nothing else. This is staunchly different to what an autoworker at Ford or a Steal worker at United Steal or a salesperson at IBM could afford from the 50s to the late 80s.
Compare that to now, a person working at Ford trying to raise a family of four on his/her own can pretty much only afford sustenance again.