A Lambert Hillyer silent romantic love triangle boxing sports lumberjack logging melodrama about a world champion boxer who must retire due to an arm injury. He becomes a lumberjack, and becomes involved with the daughter of the owner, but rivals sabotage their operation, and the boxer has to return to the ring to save the owner from bankruptcy and win the hand of the daughter.
Youth meets Ambition and leaves Love, his mother, and his small-town roots for the big city. There, in his search for Experience, he meets Pleasure and hangs out at the Primrose Path with the likes of Temptation and Intoxication. Back home, Youth's mother dies, and Love tries unsuccessfully to reach him. When Youth's money runs out his newfound friends all leave him and he sinks into a life of drug addiction, aided by Habit.
"He was a regular boy and his father a switchman. The boy determined to be like his dad and spent his play hours around the switch-tower. Thus at the crucial moment he was able to save his father's honor as a switchman, when the struggle between love and duty came and later to come to the aid of his parents in the hands of the desperate counterfeiters, eventually causing their capture." —Moving Picture World synopsis.
A Mexican is thrown out of a bar by a young prospector and swears to get even. Later, he kidnaps the prospector's wife. In the meantime, a group of drunkards shoot and kill an old Indian; The son, a brave, vows revenge and asks the tribal chief for help. When the Indians attack both prospector and Mexican, these two make a temporary truce and join forces against the common enemy.
Griffith intercuts between the lives of two couples married on the same day. One couple is rich, the other poor. Time passes, and in desperation over joblessness, the poor husband attempts to burgle a home, only to be captured at gunpoint by the mistress of the house. It is the home of the rich couple. While holding the poor intruder at gunpoint, the rich wife accidentally discovers evidence implicating her own husband in a bribery scheme.
A send-up of Griffith's THE LONELY VILLA and other movies of that sort, such as THE GIRLS AND DADDY, THE LONEDALE OPERATOR and many others, as the heroine, thinking that burglars are trying to break into her home phones her husband at the office, who rushes home.... well, who tries to rush home in his chauffeur-driven automobile.
During the Civil War, a father living in a border state leaves to join the Union Army. After he leaves, Confederate troops forage on his property, where a soldier encounters one of his daughters. The father himself is wounded on a hazardous mission and must run for his life, pursued by Confederate soldiers.
Agnes, a singer in a country church, is practicing one day when a vaudeville manager hears her and offers her a job. Over the objections of the curate who loves her, she accepts the offer and goes to the city. Later the curate goes to hear Agnes perform and, fearing that her soul is being corrupted by show business, he asks her to return to the small town with him. When she refuses, he is prepared to kill her in order to protect the purity of her soul. This brings about her change of heart, and together they return to the little church.
On a whim, a greedy tycoon decides to corner the world market in wheat. This doubles the price of bread, forcing grain producers into charity lines and others further into poverty. The film contrasts the differences between the lives of those who work to grow the wheat and the life of the man who dabbles in its sale for profit.
A husband suspects his wife of an affair. The wife's cousin borrows a shawl to meet her lover in the garden. The husband spies the couple embracing, and, thinking it's his wife, he strikes the lover. The thought that he has killed a man temporarily unhinges the husband's mind until he can be convinced that the lover is still alive.
During the French Revolution, a wealthy couple lives safely by professing republican beliefs. When a mob attacks a nearby chateau an aristocrat bursts into the couple's home. They save his life by disguising him as a servant, but he soon forces his attentions on the wife. Hearing their struggle, the husband intervenes and, stripping the aristocrat of his disguise, thrusts him outdoors to be killed by the mob.
A pack of admirers won't leave a beautiful woman alone at a seaside resort, so she devises a plan. She appears in a leg-revealing swimsuit, but the stockings have been stuffed with cotton to make her limbs appear misshapen. All but one of the men is driven off, and regret it when she removes the misleading leggings.
Soon after their engagement, Bill goes to sea, and Emily vows to stay true until his return. Unknown to her, Bill marries another woman from a different port. Emily waits faithfully for six years, finally becoming dangerously ill. When Bill suddenly appears in town with his family, Joe, who has loved Emily all along, forces Bill to make Emily's final moments happy by pretending he has returned to marry her.