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This States' Rights melodrama was based on the story A Scrap of Paper by Arthur Somers Roche, which ran in the Saturday Evening Post -- or the "Satevepost," as insiders liked to call it back then. Dixon Grant (Edmund Lowe) is a newspaper reporter assigned to investigate a gang of disreputable financiers who are responsible for a number of crooked land deals. He locates the papers that will break the swindle wide open, and the leader of the gang tries to bribe Grant and his sweetheart (Mona Kingsley) to get them back. When Grant refuses, the crooks kidnap him and torture him until he reveals the papers' hiding place. Grant manages to escape and rushes to the newsroom, where the tale of the scheme is published. The gang's leader escapes in a houseboat but while he is sleeping, it slips anchor and goes over the falls, killing him.