Forced to drop out of school at the age of fourteen to help support her family, Angela, an Italian immigrant, works long hours for low wages in a garment factory, and becomes a participant in the shirtwaist worker strikes of 1909.

In March of 1887, Rocco, an eleven-year-old from an Italian village, arrives in New York CIty where he is forced to live in squalor and beg for money as a street musician, but he finds the city's cruelty to children and animals intolerable and sets out to make things better, whatever the cost to himself.