by DESMOND WILCOX
The characters we know from fiction who still live on today. Thirteen programmes which look at figures in an American landscape. 12: The Immigrant
Leon Stein is a New Yorker. He is also a Trade Union leader, an editor, an author-and a Jew. His parents were immigrants to America and came through Ellis Island at the turn of the century. LEON STEIN works in the rag trade. At 17 he went into a sweatshop as his mother and father had before him. He learned his trade as a fabric cutter before he became a full-time organiser for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and Editor of the union newspaper, Justice.
At 65 Leon Stein still feels the powerful pull of his immigrant origins. With the union, he welcomes new immigrants - although these days they are more likely to be Chinese or South American than European. The Trade Union and the rag trade, he claims, are the great Americanisers.
Photography DAVID WHITSON Film recordist ALAN COOPER Film editor ALAN LYGO Historical adviser
PROFESSOR MARCUS CUNLIFFE Research TRISTAN ALLSOP
Executive producer ADAM CLAPHAM Producer IVOR DUNKERTON