Ivan Film Productions

A story of violence, deceit, deception and malfeasance among the rich set and the hoodlums with whom they unknowingly become involved.

Andrew Maxwell is so intent on creating a universal language that he completely neglects his wife, Laurette, and daughter, Ruth. Laurette decides she wants to return to the stage and is encouraged by Charles Prescott, a former suitor. When Maxwell discovers Laurette and Prescott together, he berates her, and she angrily moves out, taking Ruth along with her.

When retired merchant J. T. Manly is murdered, his son James, with whom he had quarreled, is arrested and finally convicted through the testimony of Manly's valet Aguinaldo. Shortly before James's execution, Sidney Holmes reveals to retired criminologist Martin Cross that on the night of the murder, he saw Aguinaldo commit the crime

Wealthy capitalist, Clinton Reynolds, and his wife, Laura, have lost their son, Arthur, kidnapped and possibly dead. Attempting to write a wrong in his factory, he adopts the daughter of one of his workers who is killed on site. The girl, Rose, grows up resentful of her adoptive father and as she grows older, seduces him in order to break up his marriage. Long lost Arthur returns and, finding his parents' married life in disarray, becomes romantically involved with Rose in order to end the relationship she has forged with his father. Reynolds comes to his senses and makes amends with Laura, at which point Arthur leaves Rose.

Duplicitous Patricia Chase schemes to break up the new marriage of Margery and Wallace Graham because she yearns for Wallace despite her marriage to another. She nearly succeeds but the revelation of a secret thwarts her at the last moment and she gets her just desserts shortly after.

Elga Pulaski and her brother Ossip live in Warsaw. They belong to a secret society whose goal is to liberate Poland and Russia from the Romanoffs. Elga is loved by Baron Jan Slozek. But Slozek is a spy who has Ossip and other members of the society arrested. When Slozek is slain, Ossip is the key suspect. He escapes to America with his sister. There, Elga meets Norman Hutchinson, and marries him without telling him her past. When Hutchinson learns the truth, he leaves Elga. Eventually, when Elga appeals to him, he sees the light.

Robert Worthing marries his sweetheart, Madeline Francis, but the wedding is ruined by his mother, who announces that because she and her parents are insane, he possesses tainted genes. Fearing that he will pass the disease on to his children, the bridegroom avoids his new wife and locks the door between their rooms. Deeply in love with Madeline, whom he is forced to love only as a sister, Robert considers suicide, but all ends well when the young man learns that he was adopted.

Ada Forbes loves Eugene Cory, but she marries Stapleton, a political boss who promises Ada's father a Senate seat in return for his daughter. After several years of an unhappy marriage, Ada leaves Stapleton and returns to Cory, now married to Alice Wood, to be his mistress. Alice finds out about the affair and confronts Ada, who promises never to see Eugene again. Then, Ada learns that her mother is dying. The double shock of losing Eugene and her mother brings on a breakdown, and Ada is put under a doctor's care. Her round-the-clock nurse falls asleep, however, and a half-insane Ada wanders away, falls into a river and drowns.

Lillian Stevens was raised without care, attention, or education on the ways of the world. When she becomes pregnant by the reckless Harold Winthrop, her mother takes her to an abortionist. Harold then falls for Ruth Stevens, raised by an attentive and loving mother, who is not so easily taken advantage of.

Nora, a girl of the lower East Side of New York City, marries a rising ward politician. A child is born. They are happy, but the young politician is running for office against the old ward boss and has to be out every night. The wife becomes jealous of a certain woman. Nora's child dies. Things get worse for her as jealousy and the seeming neglect of her husband increase. She finally leaves him and becomes a model for a noted painter. The husband finds where she is, but makes no attempt to force her to return to him, though he still loves her. One of the artist's friends, a magnate in the motion picture business, promises her a chance. Her rise to stardom is quick. The climax of the story is a struggle between the old love and the new fame. She does not know that the politician has become a first-class lawyer. Finding that the old love and the new fame are not incompatible, she is reunited with her husband.

Unable to support her second child, a boy, Alice Baldwin gives him up to the wife of Edward Stevens, a wealthy manufacturer. Her other child, a daughter, grows up, marries, and selfishly neglects her mother. Twenty years pass, and Alice's son, Edward, Jr., wins a place in the Stevens piano factory and falls in love with Julia Brennon, the owner's daughter. Meanwhile, the mother leaves home when her son-in-law objects to her presence, and she is rescued from a suicide attempt by Edward and Julia. At his foster father's home he realizes her identity, and at last they find happiness together.

When elderly Joseph Moreau and his young wife Therese offer refuge to starving young dramatist Paul Savary, gossips begin to spread rumors of a love affair between the wife and the writer. For the good of all concerned, Paul moves into separate quarters. One day Paul overhears the gossip again at a café and challenges the purveyor of the lie to a duel. Moreau, for his own satisfaction, takes Paul's place in combat and is mortally wounded. Moreau staggers to Paul's apartment where he discovers Therese, who has come to beg the writer to refuse to fight.

A girl reared in luxury is forced by circumstances to adapt herself to poverty.

Lillian Hill, a poor stenographer, sacrifices her romance with an equally poor playwright, Henry Parker, to marry her boss Wilbur Mason. She does this only so that she will have the means to pay for surgery to restore her mother's sight. But the surgery is unsuccessful, and her coldness towards Mason arouses his jealousy.