Lewis Beach

A small-town druggist is henpecked by his social-climbing wife to sell his pharmacy to a national chain. In addition, she tries to set up her pretty young daughter with the nitwit son of the chain's owner, even though the girl is in love with the handsome son of the town doctor. Finally the druggist decides he's had enough and takes matters into his own hands.

Donald Ingals and his wife Eunice are conventional and loving parents who are shocked when their son Bradley comes home from college with ideas that they consider to be outrageous. His parents would like him to get involved with Mary Burke, a prim and proper young lady. More complications ensue because Bradley's sister Lois is attracted to the flapper lifestyle, but she isn't sure whether she can handle its emotional demands.

Father sells his drugstore and the Jones family heads for New York to enjoy sophisticated city life. They lose all their money before deciding to go back home.

Having a municipal position, Bernard Ingals has almost bankrupted himself sending his three children to college. The youngsters all arrive home for Christmas Eve, and their parents do their utmost to give them a good time, but the thoughtless and selfish children make other plans and go to a party, leaving their parents to a lonely dinner. A member of the common council arrives at the Ingals home and orders Bernard to reinstate a municipal employee who has been dismissed; Bernard refuses and submits his resignation. The grandmother, a strong-minded old lady, then sets out to put things right: she stakes Bernard to his life-long dream, a greenhouse of his own, and then lectures the children on their thoughtless and profligate ways. The children reform and get jobs, and the goose hangs high at last.

When Dorothy wants to marry Bob (Robert Agnew), her mother, Mildred, forbids the match. Dorothy angrily asserts that Mildred might reconsider if her own mother had forbid her marriage. The rest of the film is a flashback, as Mildred recalls her own youth, when her dictatorial mother did forbid her to marry Lyman. Lyman enlisted with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders to fight in the Spanish-American War, but was killed in battle.