When British gentleman Wilfred Denver weds the beautiful Nellie, he earns the undying hatred of Nellie's former sweetheart, Geoffrey Ware. After several years of cozy matrimonial contentment, Denver finds himself heavily in debt.

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.

Andrew Maxwell is so intent on creating a universal language that he completely neglects his wife, Laurette, and daughter, Ruth. Laurette decides she wants to return to the stage and is encouraged by Charles Prescott, a former suitor. When Maxwell discovers Laurette and Prescott together, he berates her, and she angrily moves out, taking Ruth along with her.

During the Franco-Prussian War, Jean Renyea wins the love of Helene, thus incurring the enmity of Pierre, her hunchbacked suitor.

Arnold L'Hommedieu and his friends Archie Hartogensis and Hugo Waldemar go to New York to find work after being unfairly expelled from college. Arnold starts off as helpful and idealistic, but after being beaten down by life, he decides he is only after money and becomes an opium smuggler. His pals have fared no better: Archie becomes a drug addict and is in debt thanks to his spendthrift fiancee, while Hugo has lost his money after investing in a show that flopped. The two go to Arnold for financial aid. They await a shipment of opium, but the police are onto them and raid the hideout; only Arnold evades the cops.

Robert Strickland, the self-confessed murderer of Gerald Trask, refuses to defend himself on the witness stand. His attorney, however, cross-examines Strickland's wife.

Patriotism, love and treason in the United States during the First World War. Barker manages to give every scene the right climate through inventive use of color. From semi-documentary to cruel melodrama.

Pierre Landis is insanely jealous of his beautiful young wife Joan, and his jealousy makes him take a branding iron to her to mark her as his property.

George Dryden, an atheist since he saw his mother struck and killed by lightning as a kid, becomes a prominent surgeon and marries a woman who soon dies of heart disease. Years later, on his daughter's wedding day, he discovers that his wife had a serious love affair with an artist. Infuriated, he drives his daughter away. She becomes ill, suffering an emotional collapse. The doctor exhausts his knowledge trying to save her and finally, in desperation, he calls upon God. The girl is miraculously cured and George Dryden's faith is restored. A lost film.

Idealistic young American falls under the influence of Communist agitators.