Not everybody is fortune enough to be born into such an environment where he/she is able to get a reasonable education so he/she can chose where he/she would like to work.
No education, no money, no connections and he spoke broken english throughout his life. He would have envied the opportunities even the bottom 5% of Americans and Germans today have. Hard work and willingness to learn leads to success and then the ability to choose work.
There is a spectrum that underlies this issue. On one side is the freedom of individuals to contract with other individuals and on one side is government setting contract policies. If freedom and respect for individuality are strong values (which I think they are post-enlightenment) policies and views should be closer to the former.
Also note that any change to labor laws affects small business far more than large business. Amazon can create robots to do the jobs of sorting where smaller firms cannot. The more regulation on labor in industries and companies the more important capital is and the more valuable size is. The financial industry in America (and in many other countries) is a key example of this.
And most of the top 5% Americans and Germans back than lived in fear of militant strikes, riots and revolutionary workers in general. They would have envied the social peace of modern western societies.
And I don't know when your Great grandfather migrated but one hand you can't draw conclusions from a single persons experiences and on the other hand stories like this have a lot to do with the specific economic situation in his new homeland at that time
What can we draw conclusions based on? Right now in America every single person has access to the internet where they can access an incredible number of educational materials through libraries. Most college campuses are open and allow for sit ins and, at least in certain states, there are plenty of job opportunities. Not to mention almost all families in poverty today have air conditioning, refrigerators and access to more varieties of food than anyone did 50 years ago.
The economic environment today is incredibly favorable towards those who are willing to work hard and opportunities are boundless for anyone with intelligence willing to seek them. There are strong social factors holding groups and individuals back but social issues cannot be fixed with economic or political action.
As I said:
> Not everybody is fortune enough to be born into such an environment where he/she is able to get a reasonable education ...
And it is not even only about intelligence. If nobody showed you how to learn, you will not be able to just know how to do that on your own at the library or on your computer at home. You will not know where to start or who to ask for help. I also assume that this is why children of academics study at the university while working class children don't. Their parents don't know how to teach their children to learn.
And then there is this study too: "Study finds poverty reduces brain power" http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-poverty-brain-i...
For every story of your great grandfather, how many people spent all their money to get to America but it was actually a con and the boat trip they bought wasn't real? How many arrived in New Orleans and couldn't toil as a worker because they couldn't get a job? How many bought into a different idea and went to France to seek a new start and got killed in the War? Or Russia? Or Japan? How many arrived in New Orleans, toiled as a grocery store worker for years before being fired and left unemployed? How many toiled for years before injury left them helpless? How many tried to learn a foreign language but didn't have the mental ability to do it? How many tried to start a store in another town but picked a shitty town and went bankrupt? Or picked an industry with a ruthless competitor who put them out of business with illegal means?
How many of the German population tried to do something like the above? And how many of those hit on good things to try and good ways to go about them? And how many of those were successful?
That fraction of a percent is your model for how everyone should live?
If you only consider that "successful people worked hard" and conclude "hard work leads to success" then you are misunderstanding the nature of the world.
Hard work leads towards success but success, however it's normally defined, is a filter that excludes most people trying for it.
[1] There are quite some people living on the street though - especially in larger cities - who for various reasons can't or won't claim their social welfare money.
Stating that people only live on the street (and freeze to death during winter) because they won't claim their welfare money is a gross simplification. Did you talk to all/any of them?