The American Way chronicles the story of one of the largest industrial actions of the early 20th Century utilizing the Triangle Factory Fire tragedy, as an inciting incident.

At about the same time, with no knowledge of the growing instability of the U.S. labor situation, Michael Casaburi, a former Sicilian policeman who has lost his wife in a natural catastrophe, contemplates travel to the U.S. to seek work and a new life.

Through a distant acquaintance of the family, after reaching Lawrence, Massachusetts, Michael secures a job and sends to Sicily for his sixteen-year-old daughter, Anna.

Michael only becomes aware of the possibility of a strike after he has sent for Anna and has no idea how deep the rift between the tens of thousands of abused factory workers and the mill owners actually is.

Run by William Wood and owned by J.P. Morgan one of the three richest men in the world, the battle has become one of denial by the bosses and constant struggle by the workers.

Due to the fact that the mass of workers is divided along ethnic lines and less than ten per cent of them speak English, Wood and the other mill owners believe them to be "un-organizeable".

Foss, having been put in power largely by Wood's and other industrialist's money, agrees to help and calls out the militia who illegally declare a state of martial law.

is the Head of American Federation of Labor, or the AFL, and harbors great disdain for the unskilled, foreign workers believing them to be easily replaceable cogs in a wheel due to their numbers.

A former policeman from the small town of Ulmi in Sicily, he has lost his position due to the poverty of the region and has been forced to find work on the archaeological dig at Pompeii in the north for little pay.

He completely ignores his poor health and in contrast to the meager food conditions of the mill workers, freely engages in a gluttonous life style.

Focused on the drama of people caught up in national events larger than themselves and rising to the occasion, the story proposes that the immigrant labor of the period is largely responsible for the success of the industrialization and therefore the military might of the country.

The narrative propagates that by 1912 the conditions created by the unscrupulous industrialists and businessmen of the period created an atmosphere which directly gave rise to people like Charlie "Lucky Luciano", Meyer Lansky and Albert Anastasia and taught them, as immigrants, how to fight back against people like William Wood, president of the American Woolen Trust, J. Edgar Hoover and U. S. President William Howard Taft.

Men like the founders of Italian and Jewish organized crime in America saw and understood that 'working within the system' was a pointless exercise and therefore not a viable option to realize the American Dream.