Walter Belasco

Pretty country girl Hazel Dorn sings in her church choir when she sees a newspaper advertisement for chorus girls placed by theatrical manager John Hern. Despite her mother's pleas, she leaves home for the city. Hern has personal reasons for hiring the young girl and intends to lure her to her ruin. However, another, older girl, Fannie Rice, who has already been a victim of Hern, contrives to save Hazel.

A senator fights for the passage of a war-preparedness bill, while foreign spies conspire to plan an invasion.

Reporter Frank Sloan, investigating the disappearance of a Chinese slave girl in Chinatown which leads to opium addiction, job loss, and personal ruin, until a major murder brings him back into the story, revealing the dark underbelly of the district.

Widow Martin struggles to rear her little daughter Nora amid the squalor of the slums yet imbue her with the refinement to which she had been accustomed in her girlhood.

Widower Calvert Paige leaves his baby daughter Johnnie in New York and goes West where he becomes wealthy as a mine owner and newspaperman. Lil Magill, who came to work on his newspaper, becomes infatuated with Paige, as he is with her, and they become lovers. After several years Lil has become a successful author but Paige has tired of her. Their estrangement grows when Lil takes the side of striking miners against him.

While working his way through college, Paul Potter acquires a flock of wealthy friends who encourage him to give up his hometown fiancée, Sylvia Castle, for Muriel Evers, a flirtatious married woman. After Sylvia releases Paul, and Muriel's husband divorces her for infidelity, Paul and Muriel marry. Meanwhile, when Sylvia's father dies after being ruined in the stock market, she goes from one job to another in the city until she tries acting in a stock company. There she befriends Henry Leamington, an alcoholic leading man, who, as he tutors her, falls in love and stops drinking because of her. When Paul discovers Muriel's unfaithfulness, he renews his acquaintance with Sylvia, who still loves him.

In his will, Mr. Baird leaves his son Arnold just one seven-passenger auto and a hundred dollars to keep it filled up and in good repair. When James Bennett hears of this, he insists that Baird do something to make his fortune before he can marry his daughter Ruth. Bennett begins by using the car to start a jitney-bus line. This is not terribly impressive to Bennett -- who owns a trolley company -- and he decides he would rather see Ruth married to his controller, William Mott-Smith.

In pre-Civil War days, a woman dies in childbirth. Her sister, believing the child to be illegitimate, leaves the baby in the care of one of her sister's slaves.