Twelve year old 'Boefje' spends most of his time in the alleys, on rooftops and in the harbor of Rotterdam. A local clergyman takes pity on him and attempts to teach him good manners.

After her mother -- a prostitute -- is murdered by her father, Sien is raised by her grandparents. Instead of a bourgeois life with grocer's son Gerrit van Buren, she chooses for an adventurous life with toutman Jan Meier. She follows him and becomes a revue artist in an Amsterdam cabaret, until her father comes to see her...

This government commissioned film -- made on the occasion of the forty year anniversary of queen Wilhelmina's reign -- chronicles the lives of two Dutch families from 1898 to 1938 against the backdrop of the social and political events of the times. It shows the emergence of trade unions, the troubled years of the First World War, the development of aviation and Schiphol airport, the Dutch East Indies and the lives of the Dutch royal family.