Melville Carruthers finally decides to propose to his girlfriend Grace and sets out for her house, but gets a sudden attack of shyness and stops in at a café to calm himself. A fight erupts and Melville is knocked out. He wakes up in his room the following day with a young "cabaret girl" taking care of him. Just at that time Grace and her father stop by, and Melville is unable to explain who the girl is and why she's there. Complications ensue.

After her boss sexually harasses her and has an affair with her sister, stenographer Janet Butler quits to support a mill workers' strike, falls in love with a stockholder named Brooks Insall, witnesses her mother shoot the boss during the strike, is wrongly imprisoned but exonerated by Insall, and ultimately enjoys a happy future with him, her recovered mother, and her sister Elsie.

Young minister Keith Rollins comes to a backwoods community in Kentucky and finds that lawless and political elements are against him and threaten his position with the congregation.