In France, and ex-lieutenant returns to find his sweetheart is caring for a baron's blinded son.
An innocent young shop girl unjustly sent to prison--deprived of love and romance-stripped of everything but her own unvarying faith and unassailable honesty.
The daily lives and struggles of a group of workers in a small German town. They face poverty, unemployment, and various hardships, but also find moments of hope and solidarity. The film portrays their efforts to survive and support each other in difficult economic conditions.
Safe-cracker Ned Dugan agrees to perform one last robbery, earning him enough money to move his younger brother, Jimmy, out of the city. At the behest of a crooked politician, Ned attempts to steal valuable papers from the home of Mary Callahan, who, coincidentally, is caring for the injured Jimmy. Mary catches Ned in the act, but she refrains from calling the police. Ned repays Mary by abandoning his life of crime, undermining the politician, getting her father out of jail, and saving her impressionable brother from a blackmailer.
Young farmer David Ross stands to inherit his uncle's fortune provided he contacts his missing cousin. When the cousin dies, the cousin's brother persuades a radio personality Maida Vaughn to assume the heiress's identity. She falls for the farmer, confesses the deception, and they marry.
Allayne Norman's husband Bruce is a gambler and drunkard who kills her artist cousin in an argument. Bruce flees the studio with Allayne and their son, and places his identifying documents in the pockets of an amnesiac man. To avoid the consequences of his actions, Allayne identifies the man as her husband. When Bruce returns, he tries to kill the man but is shot instead. The man regains his memory and is cleared of wrongdoing.
The Shepherd King
Doris Moore is a country girl who is conned by two crooks, Harry Leland and Pop Clark. They convince the naive girl to come with them to New York City and play the badger game on William Lake. But the intervention of Kate Fallon, who runs the gang's New York home, saves the innocent and traps the guilty. Instead of tricking Lake, Doris marries him.
During the French and Indian War, Col. Munro’s daughters journeying to Fort William Henry are betrayed by guide Magua. Hawkeye and Mohicans rescue them, but Hurons capture Cora. Uncas dies saving her; Hawkeye avenges him, symbolizing the Mohicans’ demise.
June Arbuthnot tries to make her bored husband jealous by feigning a scandal with another man, which ultimately backfires when the ruse becomes too believable.
John Dowling, a greedy factory owner, cuts his employees' pay while raising their food prices at the company store. The employees strike but to no avail. Mary Garvin visits Dowling to plead the laborers' cause, but because her mother had once refused his marriage proposal, he attacks Mary out of revenge. In the struggle, Dowling is shot, and Mary is tried and convicted of murder. Before the execution, foreman "Bull" Thompson boasts that his bullet killed Dowling during Mary and the factory owner's struggle, and Dowling's son Chester, who has attempted to introduce reforms into the factory, races to the governor's train to secure a pardon for Mary. After Mary's release, she and Chester are married.
Sea captain "Hurricane" Hardy searches for treasure in the Sahara Desert and encounters Helen Maitland, the last remaining member of a missionary group. He offers her protection and carries her to the coast, with the intention of claiming her for himself when she recuperates. At a rundown seacoast hotel, Helen befriends Ralph Alden, a young man fighting off addiction and despair, as well as a three-year-old orphan named "Peroxide" whom Leon Roche, the proprietor, is rearing.
A physician advises Helen Blair to seek a different climate. She is without money. Philip Cobb, her daughter's sweetheart, tells them his employer, Richard Standing, has refused him an increase. Thus Mrs. Blair discovers the whereabouts of Standing, whom she rejected years before to marry Blair. Standing treats her savagely when she appeals to him. His son, John, overhears the conversation and, seeing the girl, forces them to take the necessary funds to save the mother. The father discovers his love affair and sends him to Honolulu. The jealous Cobb gets a letter from a friend there and forges a new note telling that young Standing has become a drunkard. Ailene and Cobb are married. John Standing returns after months and he and Ailene learn of the deception. Cobb repents his deceit and drowns himself.
Wealthy miner, Ben Cameron's son, Bruce, becomes the criminal "The Shadow" after being disinherited for spendthrift ways and theft. "The Shadow" attempts to extort money from Mary, Cameron's former love who is married to a struggling bookkeeper. Eventually he is shot and killed by his father, Ben, during a confrontation over the extortion attempt. In the end, Cameron collapses in grief, while Mary and her husband remain unaware of the dramatic events.
During the Civil War, Rachel Hayne, a young widow, is among those "held by the enemy" when her old family home is within the lines occupied by the Northern troops. Protected by Colonel Prescott from looters and the unwelcome attentions of Surgeon Fielding, Rachel begins to fall in love with the gallant Yankee officer. Their romance is disrupted when Rachel's husband Gordon, long reported dead, is captured as a spy and condemned to death.
Tom Denton comes from the East to the Northwest lumber region and becomes co-owner of a lumber camp with Howard Patton, whose bored wife Vera insists on flirting with Tom despite his discouragement.
Mary Lawton bids farewell to her father, Mark Lawton, and his business partner, John Adams, to whom she is engaged, leaving Arizona to study art in New York. After a time, John visits Mary unexpectedly and discovers to his sorrow that she has forgotten him in the convivial whirl of her new life.
Basil Breckenridge, a broken old man on the verge of starvation, but concealing it because of his proud southern ancestry, is set upon by young ruffians on the street. The old man becomes infuriated and gives the young leader a shaking. His father, Ald. Connors, the city's political boss, happens along and attacks the old man, who strikes at him with his cane. The sword blade inside falls out and the police arrest him on the charge of assault with intent to kill.
Richard Craig and Paul Hessert, who work in the same office, are great chums. Both are in love, however, with the stenographer.
After graduating from a fashionable finishing school and touring Europe with her father, Selina Peake returns to the United States, where her father is accidentally killed after losing his fortune in a gambling den. Selina is reduced to teaching in a high school in the Dutch community at High Prarie near Chicago. She boards in the farmhouse of Klass Poole, a dull-witted market gardener, and finally marries Pervus DeJong, a poor and backward farmer. She shares the drudgery of her husband's futile life and finds happiness only in their small son, Dirk, whom she calls "So-Big."