John Craig is a struggling young contractor who falls into a crooked business scheme. A trio of unsavory partners on the verge of dissolving their company have hired him for a job, assuming that he will fail.

A young man of social standing chooses instead to live as a hobo. He gets work in a lumber camp, and there uncovers intrigue by German agents.

Truthful Tulliver, a Westerner and a journeying newspaperman, followed by Silver Lode Thompson, printer and compositor, arrives in Glory Hole to start a newspaper.

A woman in Canada abused by her aunt falls in love with a foreign composer looking for inspiration, who comes to find it in her and the star-crossed romance that develops between them.

Millionaire meat packer Peter Cameron, greedy for more money and power, maneuvers an alliance between his daughter Rose and George Gray, the son of Cameron's business rival Max Gray, in order to increase his control of the food industry. George, a lawyer, opposes the trust, and as a result is professionally ruined by Cameron, disinherited by his father, and jilted by his fiancée. Out on his own, George gets a job at a mill and starts at the bottom. When an epidemic breaks out among his fellow laborers due to their eating spoiled meat from the trust, George secures evidence of criminal practices which ultimately brings about the conviction of Cameron and the trust. In championing the rights of the downtrodden, George wins back Rose and reforms Cameron.

Hugh Payne owns and operates a mine in the West, supporting his brother Larry's luxurious life style. Hugh has nurtured Abby Hope, a young girl with whom he has fallen in love. When Larry comes to visit, he and Abby decide to get married, and to spare Abby's feelings, Hugh pretends that he is infatuated with another woman.

Living in the New York slums with her lazy father, Bessie takes imaginary voyages to "Dream Valley" on a "yacht" she has built in the backyard. Gilbert Byfield, posing as a poor man while completing his book, falls in love with Bessie and secretly arranges for her to spend a month at the Byfield country estate.

While Bill Burnham is jailed for drunkenly shooting up the town, he receives a letter saying that his father has died, his sister Janet is about to marry a worthless count, and the family fortune is in danger. Unable to leave, he convinces his friend, Johnny Wiggins, a motion picture cowboy, to go to his home in Palm Beach, which Bill left as a boy, and impersonate him.