This film, based on the stage play of the same name by Adolph Philipps, gave comedian Lew Fields a role that had both humor and pathos. Charles Wendel (Fields) is a wealthy grocer who, along with his wife (Justine Cutting), adopts a little orphan, Mary (Madge Evans). He also has a son, Ralph (William Sherwood), who he hopes will become his business partner when he returns from college. Ralph, however, comes home with a snooty attitude and refuses. Wendel gets him a job at the bank, but the young man botches it up by falling prey to a pair of swindlers (Pinna Nesbit and George Cowl, who also directed). He embezzles bank money to fund a crooked company and is forced to flee when one of the swindlers is murdered. Wendel coughs up the money to pay for his son's theft, but it bankrupts him and he is forced to return to his pushcart days, while Mary (played as a young woman by Lillian Cook) goes to work. Eventually the son is cleared of the murder, and when he makes good, he comes home to his father and marries Mary.
by Janiss Garza
synopsis
