After being convicted of stealing some jewels, Annette Eldrige is sent to a reformatory administered by a sadistic and corrupt female warder. However, one of the board of trustees takes an interest in the new arrival and begins to investigate the management of the institution.

Two sisters from Indiana, the wide-eyed and innocent Mae Thorpe, and her more streetwise sister June, move into the Rolf House for Homeless Girls in New York. With June's help, Mae obtains a job as a stenographer for the scientist Joseph von Schraeder, while June gets work as a telegraph operator at Western Union.

Min, the owner of a dockside hotel, is forced to make difficult decisions about the future of Nancy, the young woman she took in as an infant.