Acting
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
Pat Dugan puts his last penny into oil prospecting and finds the oil. He deserts the old shack for his idea of what a palace should be and sends Jimmie to college. Jimmie promptly thrashes three of the students and polishes off the policeman who interferes. Then he leaves college for a partnership in a nursery business with a young Italian. Pat moves east and settles next door to Lady Blessington, but supposes the placid old lady who fraternizes with his wife to be the house- keeper. Jimmy turns up and falls in love with Joyce, Lady Blessington's god-daughter and marries her in spite of his father's commands, but when Pat sees how it all comes out he takes the full credit to himself.
A 1916 film directed by Chester M. Franklin.
After his father's sudden death, Dick Browning learns that three financiers swindled Mr. Browning of his money. Because his mother is destitute, Dick fences the only remaining jewel in his father's estate, but when she dies, he joins a gang of crooks, vowing revenge on the financiers. Dressed in feminine attire and known as Mary Brown, Dick robs two of the men. In the meantime, he has fallen in love with Betty, a woman who was lured to the crooks' lair by one of his cronies.
After discovering her husband Roger has been unfaithful to her, Angela De Haven sets out to make all men pay for his deceit.
Sedgewick Blynn is determined to marry a rich woman. One night he saves a child from a fire. Bessie Morgan, an heiress charmed by his act of heroism, promises to marry him, but at the last minute her father forbids it. Soon after, Blynn receives a telegram informing him of the death of his mother, and he realizes that he has wasted his life.
After a young inventor discovers a powerful new explosive, agents from a German chemical firm induce him to study at a German university. While there, he is repelled by certain aspects of the people, and he leaves for Belgium. When the war begins, the inventor saves a Belgian burgomaster's daughter from Prussian invaders. The inventor and the girl endure horrible suffering because of the war, but they find happiness at its end, while the formerly fighting nations direct their effort towards world peace at the Paris conferences. The assassination of Kurt Eisner of Bavaria occurs at the end.
David Belkov, a newsboy born of foreign parents who live in "New York's crucible," the East Side, admires the late Theodore Roosevelt, but when he sees a poor family being evicted, he joins the Hogan Street anarchist group, of which his father's friends and his sweetheart Yolanda Kosloff, are members. The group plans to assassinate Judge Norton, who earlier condemned one of their comrades to the electric chair. After David witnesses the bravery of twelve-year-old Mary Hogan, who sings patriotic ditties to drown out the soap box orations of the anarchists, he prints leaflets to combat the anarchist views. Mary is killed trying to thwart the anarchists' plot, and David is caught and badly beaten. After government agents, thought to be converts, break up the gang, David arrives just in time to stop Yolanda, who is dancing at a celebration at Norton's home, from dropping a bomb. David is shot by the anarchist leader, but Yolanda, realizing her error, nurses him to health.
William Oglesby, the editor of the Oglesburg Clarion , strives to keep alive the spirit of the antebellum South and is furious when the townspeople warmly welcome New York businessman and philanthropist Thomas Foster. Oglesby stubbornly resists the Northerner's influence on the town, but when his daughter Edith falls in love with Foster's son and when even his wife Sylvia becomes enthralled with Foster's progressive ideas, he finally relents and accepts the new order.
Prudence's ( Olive Thomas ) parents send her from their Pennsylvania Quaker colony to a fashionable girls seminary, hoping she can learn about the devil's tricks, instead she engages in girlish pranks, but uses her pure appearance to escape blame. Later, Prudence visits her New York aunt, a society matron, and soon attracts an array of male admirers. She falls in love with wealthy Grayson Mills, but John Melbourne, who lives off of his wife's wealth, plots to seduce her. After Melbourne loans Prudence $200 to pay a gambling debt, he forces her to go to a roadhouse by threatening to show her stern father her canceled check. At dinner, Prudence produces a love letter which Melbourne had earlier written to an actress, and says that if she is not back by midnight, her hotel clerk will show Melbourne's wife his nineteen other love letters. After Melbourne hurries her back, he discovers that she only had the one letter. Prudence now becomes engaged to Grayson.
When Barton Baynes's mother and father die, his Aunt Deel and Uncle Peabody provide a home for him. He grows up with Amos Grimshaw, son of a miserly moneylender who holds the farmers of the area in his power, and falls in love with Sally Dunkelberg.
Rebecca Butler, tired of poverty, takes a job in a Broadway chorus line and determines to marry a millionaire.
Vi Marchmont (Viola Dana) is a spoiled rich girl who has thirteen lovers. Her Aunt Letitia (Kate Lester) wants her to halt her flirtatious ways and has picked Clyde Van Ness (Theodore Von Eltz) as the right one out of the bunch -- not that Vi agrees. Aunt Letitia sends her off to the country, along with Van Ness and the gardener, Richard Hardy (Jack Mulhall). Vi winds up falling for the gardener, much to her aunt's horror, and in spite of the class differences, he becomes her fourteenth lover.
Forced to wear quaint short dresses and pigtails so that she will inspire her grandfather's sentimental poetry, nineteen-year-old Joy Havenith longs for companions of her own age.
Mountaineer Pap Clayton has promised his daughter Sairy Ann (Dorothy Gish) to his cousin Jed Martin, but Sairy Ann loves Dr. Richard Cavanagh (Sam DeGrasse), the son of Judge Lee Cavanagh. In the midst of a feud between the Claytons and the Jacksons, a jealous Jed sets out to kill Richard.
Frank Trent, raised by his father with an old-fashioned reverence for women, goes to the city where he obtains a job as an aide to corrupt politician Senator Briggs. Learning that Briggs, who is supporting the incumbent mayor, plans to smear his opponent, Mrs. Burke, by stirring up charges that her adopted daughter Margaret is actually her illegitimate child, Frank quits his job and determines to prove Mrs. Burke's innocence. A lost film
Sallie is a beautiful Kentucky girl who belongs to a family of Union sympathizers. Her brother is a lieutenant in the Union army, and on a visit home brings Major Rushton, his superior officer, who falls in love with Sallie, "the little Yank."
Adopted by the Kellys from an orphanage, Nancy is reared in dreadful surroundings and mistreated as the household drudge. She accidentally makes the acquaintance of Jack Halliday, son of a wealthy city family who is fishing near her home. When Mrs. Kelly beats Nancy for accepting the attentions of her husband, the girl escapes into the woods and conceals herself in the rear of Jack's car as he drives into the city.
French Canadian trapper Victor Raoul returns to the trading post at St. Ignace to find a rival for the affections of Yvonne, his business partner's daughter, in the Marquis Courtière, Parisian representative of the fur company. Raoul quarrels with Fontaine over the visitor's business dealings and his attentions to Yvonne.
