Loose adaptation of Mary Shelley‘s “Frankenstein”.
Poor stenographer Gloria Graham believes that clothes make a woman successful in business and as a result she incurs great debts.
Helen Steele, who has theatrical aspirations, has been told by Sidney Parker that, owing to her lack of stage experience he cannot entertain her proposition of giving her the leading part in his new production, "The Siren." Believing that she can get Parker to consent if she is persuasive enough, Helen has her fiancé, Henry Tracey, invite the theatrical manager to the party to be given by John W. Cannell so that she may work upon him. At the affair Helen manages to obtain Parker's consent to give her a trial it she is successful in having Jack Craigen, a friend of Cannell, who has been living in Patagonia for a long time and who is a woman hater, propose to her.
Jim Ogden, secretly engaged to Madge Hemmingway, wealthy heiress, becomes sensitive over his lack of money and breaks the engagement. In a moment of pique she marries Count Van Tuyle. After six months she returns from Europe, minus her husband. Trying to forget her error, she goes to the country.
Sally Lou, the small daughter of village blacksmith Jim Davis, uses her sawdust doll to take the place of a real mother.
When wealthy Wall Street stockbroker Stephen Duane neglects his wife Julia for business, she consorts with philanderer Bert Brockwell. Finding them in an embrace forced by Brockwell, Stephen denounces Julia and leaves. After losing his fortune in the market, Stephen refuses Julia's offer to sell her jewels, and stays away for one year
This tells of a pretty miss, expelled from a girls' school, who goes in for a harmless adventure. She poses as a slum girl and is taken in tow by a snobbish society girl, who at first befriends and then tries to impose, upon her.
Badger, a clerk at a Wall Street brokerage, discovers that his boss Gideon Bloodgood has swindled an investor, Fairweather, out of his money. Fairweather dies of a heart attack after an argument with Bloodgood, and Badger uses this knowledge to blackmail him. By a strange coincidence, Bloodgood's daughter Lucy runs over Fairweather's son, Paul, and cripples him.
Harrison Craig, with the aid of a woman who has lost her husband through the sinking of a ship, uses her wiles on a member of Saxonia's royal family and obtains valuable drawings. The Prince and his lieutenant plot to demolish the block house in which Craig is a prisoner, but one of the artillery shots frees his bounds and he escapes.
Brutal rental agent Joseph McGuire demands that Molly-O marry McGuire's son Denny, lest her family be thrown out of their humble shack. But Molly-O prefers the company of carriage driver Larry O'Dea, who unfortunately is just as broke as she is. Or is he?
Eddie Manning, on a secret mission in Central America, is apparently penniless, and he becomes friends with a street urchin named Muggsy. When Muggsy is knocked down by a car, Manning meets its owner, Miriam Folansbee, and she offers him a job as a chauffeur. There is a plot to overthrow the country and Inez, a dancer at a cafe, tells Manning that Carlos Medina is the leader of the revolutionaries.
Socially prominent but penniless Stephen De Koven marries Muriel Chester, a woman whose loveliness he admires but whose money he really desires. Discovering this on her wedding night, Mrs. De Koven, because of her love for her husband and her wounded pride, elects to live her life alone, seeing her husband only when formalities demand.
Lorenzo Carilo selects more-or-less menial jobs at which to make a living, other more "select" jobs not paying enough, and then he meets and falls in love with Vivian Forrester the daughter of a new-rich family. What's a poor boy to do? He might pose as a French Duke.
Young Edmond Durand (Conrad Nagel) has been reared under the autocratic influence of his aunt (Marcia Manon), who directs a large silk mill in southern France. He revolts against a stifling career planned for him and leaves home with Marcelle, a Gypsy girl (Renée Adorée). They roam the countryside with a Gypsy caravan in romantic bliss; they are inadvertently separated but at the outbreak of war are reunited. When peace is restored, the lovers find happiness together.
A doctor's wife is arrested for educating impoverished women about birth control.
In this film, African-American Leroy Collins struggles with the onus placed on him by Society when he falls in love with a white woman.
Tom Larnigan, encouraged by his victory over the Textile Trust, turns his attention to the Railroad Monopoly. Tom receives warning from the Graft Trust to cease his activities or suffer the fate of his father and brother.
The plan is this: a foreign man of war is interned in the harbor. By blowing up this boat, Carney figures that strained relation existing between this country and warring nations will snap and the United States will be drawn into the conflict. This would mean untold orders and profit for the Steel Trust. Stone and Carney plan to carry out the plot with aid of an eccentric inventor named Bill Bean. #7 in the Graft serial.
Stone assures Weisner, head of the Coal Trust, that Larnigan will never start for Pennsylvania. Weisner is skeptical and informs Stone that if he does go he may be killed, as a strike is in progress. Weisner, a little later in Maxwell's home repeats the statement of it being an easy matter to kill Tom should be come to the coal country. Dorothy Maxwell and Kitty Rockford overhear the conversation. They decide to go to the coal country and lend their aid to Tom. 8th chapter in the Graft serial.
Bruce Larnigan, in connection with Jack Stevens, is editing the "Independent," the newspaper which Ben Travers had bought to assist the fight against the trusts. 10th episode in the Graft serial.