Yes, exactly! When people marvel at how well 100 year old buildings were built, I always say, “well that’s because the crappy ones all fell down 85 years ago”. 
I will say there is a tiny bit of truth though, when all manufacturing was domestic. In a small national economy, competing on price is much more difficult, so companies competed on quality more. You’ve got ten factories in America making wrenches, and they’re all buying from the same five steel companies, who in turn are getting ore from the same three mines. There’s not a lot of wiggle room in a supply chain that small. Everyone is getting basically the same prices from their vendors for materials, and labour costs are fairly flat as well thanks to unions. That drove companies to compete on quality more since they couldn’t do a lot to move the price. It wasn’t out of some noble ideal about building things to last though (as people often think). It was still cynical capitalism, just on a different vector.
As soon as the economy globalized though, competing on price got very easy indeed, and the Harbor Freights of the world were born. Then, it turned out everyone wanted crap all along if it cost less.
