When her husband Pete is shot over a craps game, Molly McGill goes to work as a scrubwoman to support her two children.

After the death of his wife the baby was all the sheriff had left, the promise of hope in the future, and the reflection of all that was dear in the past. But a sheriff has no time to tread a cradle rocker, so the baby started off on the long journey to relatives across the desert. Then the sheriff was called away to hunt the "bad men" of the desert, and found there a deserted prairie schooner, the occupants dead and his baby gone.

An adaptation of the 1861 novel by English author Ellen Wood: The story of long-suffering Lady Isabel Carlisle cast in a modern setting.

When the double wedding takes two daughters away from the old man at once, the youngest, now the only one left, in outraged spirit promises never to leave her father, but soon she too is departing for a new home. Then comes a cold hard fact of life. The son-in-law claims his right to make a home alone for his wife. In his bitterness and anger, the father denies them both the house. Several years later the lonely old man meets at the gate a babe in arms. When he learns whose baby it is, heart hunger craves another sight, and sought, brings with it the only natural result.

Rosalie Lane's sister dies from overwork at the Treadwell mills. Asking the company for enough money to bury her sister she is denied leading to desperate measures on her part. After many struggles she can save herself from a life of squalor and find happiness.

John Rapley, head of Associated Baking Companies, executes a commercial coup that raises the price of bread to 6 cents a loaf. The price increase has a devastating effect on Mary Quinn, a Valencian factory girl who supports her younger brother Joel and sister Norah. Because of the higher cost, Mary can no longer afford to buy as much bread as she previously could for her family, impacting her ability to provide for them.

Lillian’s affluent parents raised Identical cousins Janet & Lillian Ford. Lillian marries Sir Anthony Jessop and settles in England. Jessop soon tires of Lillian's frivolity but loves their son Bobby. Under the pretense of visiting her dying father, Lillian travels to America, followed by her lover, Raymond Fleury, and they travel West together after she persuades Janet to impersonate her at Ford's deathbed. When Janet learns that Bobby has been hurt, she sails to England and cares for him. After Jessop's uncle dies, he returns as the Earl of Devon, and grows to love Janet, who he thinks is Lillian. Hearing of Jessop's good fortune, Lillian returns. After Fleury pursues and shoots her, Jessop proposes to Janet that they quietly marry and keep their past secret.

Echo, the orphaned "flower of no man's land," has been raised by an Indian foster father, Kahoma. Then, when opera singer Roy Talbot goes West to recover his health, Echo falls instantly in love and forgets all about Big Bill, her cowboy sweetheart. Roy marries Echo and takes her back East, but soon after returning to his adoring public, he loses all interest in her. Finally, Echo leaves Roy and goes back to the wilderness, where she discovers that Roy had already been married when they met and had deserted his wife years before. For so deceiving his adopted daughter, Kahoma tracks Roy down and kills him, while Echo forgets about her big-city unhappiness and returns to Big Bill, with whom she makes plans to marry.

After their wedding, Richard Vaughan and his wife Courtney take up residence in Richard's ancestral home. Courtney, despised by Nanny, the old housekeeper, and neglected by her husband, who buries himself in his chemical experiments, leads a lonely life. Consequently, when experimental chemist Basil Gallatin pays a lengthy visit to the Vaughan home, Courtney finds herself attracted to him. One day, during Richard's absence, a burglar alarm places Courtney and Gallatin in a compromising situation.