A candidate for governor, eager Gerald Harper persuades his equally ambitious wife Carol to enlist the aid of her friend Diana Casper, whose influence with political boss Jarvis Flint could help him win the election. Carol agrees to speak to Diana on condition that Gerald temporarily assume her work in the city's tenements.

A publicist for a racy burlesque troupe romances the daughter of the head of The Purity League, an organization that wishes to see such shows banned.

A young disabled girl invites a poor family, that she often watches playing in the street, over for Christmas dinner.

A newly adopted girl is doted on by her adopted father but faces indifference from her adopted mother.

Jack O'Brien comes to the mining town of El Dorado with nothing but his pluck and his music. Biddy Malone was the first to hear his singing, and it won a place for the lad in her heart and a job at her woodpile to pay for his board, while Mary, who lived with Biddy, looked and listened, and learned to love the big singer. Hardpan Henry, who owned the Lucky Strike claim, and who was really Mary's father, also hears the troubadour's song, took a fancy to the lad and showed him the sights of El Dorado.

Kate, whose father, a university graduate, died when she was very young, is adopted by her tenement neighbor, Mrs. McMahon, after her mother, a woman of refinement, dies. At ten, the ill-nourished girl, who has grown up watching her drunken foster father fight with her overworked foster mother, goes to work in a factory after Mr. McMahon loses his job. During the next eight years, Kate's stepbrother, Big Bill McMahon, becomes her friend, sweetheart and protector.