Joseph J. Dowling

When oil is discovered just outside a small New England town, the residents go wild at the prospect of newfound wealth, and they invest their money with the head of the venture, a young man named Bruce Merlin.

John living a Bohemian life in Paris when his twin brother James, a British financier, appears and implores John to assume his identity so that he can secretly cross the Atlantic for a business deal. John consents and soon discovers that James is a cruel, unethical man who has forced his wife June into their marriage. John attempts to rectify the situation, and June falls in love with him.

A young Italian immigrant girl, uneducated and superstitious, finds an abandoned baby on the stairs of her tenement, with a note attached explaining the baby is illegitimate. A young newspaper reporter, whom the girl knows from waiting on him at the restaurant where she works, reads the note for her. But the police arrest her, at no evidence whatsoever other than possession of the baby, for kidnapping.

Love and double-crosses at the bank.

Wealthy wastrel Neil Sparks devotes more attention to the pursuit of pleasure than to his inherited oil business. Neil's neglect allows two schemers, Craig and Abbott, to siphon the Sparks' Texas oil through the construction of an illegal pipeline. Upon receiving notification that his wells are running dry, and in an attempt to rid himself of the unwelcome attentions of his mercenary fiancée, Bess Kinloch, Neil ventures West to investigate, using an assumed name. Discovering the theft, Neil sends for his butler, and the two of them force the crooks to buy a parcel of land and deed the property to Myrtle Pratt, whose father had been swindled and murdered by the scoundrels. Justice served, Neil returns East to be followed by Myrtle and her five brothers, who arrive during his engagement party to Bess. Neil shocks his guests by announcing that the children are his, and he and Myrtle wed.

Julian Randolph, a disreputable lawyer, gains an ad interim appointment to the Supreme bench as a reward for fixing a jury that acquits the brother of the political boss of a charge of murder. He was promised the nomination for the full term at the next election, but gains it only through threat of exposure of a bigamous marriage contracted by the boss. Then comes love for a noble woman and the question whether he shall take defeat with honor or gain seeming honor at the cost of his manhood. It is a momentous problem, but he makes a decision that proves him worthy of the robes of honor.

Country girl Sheila goes to work in a city department store. After a quick courtship she marries Ray Underhill, unaware that he is a car thief.

Bessie Wheaton returns from Europe to find her nouveau riche family has adopted and magnified the worst characteristics of the upper class. Her father spends all of his time at the club, her mother cultivates snobbishness, and her sister thinks only of marrying into royalty. To shake them out of their aristocratic poses, Bessie decides to reflect all of their faults, becoming as lazy as her father and as status conscious as her mother. She even rejects her own sweetheart, Allan Shelby, to lure Count d'Orr away from her sister. Finally, the members of the family confront Bessie, and she angrily tells them that she was only mirroring their behavior. Bessie then runs away, but Allan, with whom she quickly reconciles, brings her back, just as her family acknowledges its recent burlesque of the upper crust.